Or is it “operating session Aug 2, 1976?”… Regardless of the date, it was a lot of fun hosting two great friends, Stuart Thayer and Patrick Tillery. This was the first-ever 3-operator session on the layout, and despite only having one of the two decks complete, it still took the three of us the better part of three hours to run four trains. Part of that is because I know Stuart and Patrick are both experienced operators and prototype buffs, so we put some “veteran mode” rules into effect. In addition to the normal rules of “get the cars where they need to go,” “follow signals,” and “follow the timetable and orders,” we had to protect crossings (more on that in a later post), unlock/set/lock semaphores to protect the branches we were operating, cut cars to avoid blocking a new road across two yard tracks, and follow all blocking instructions including placing all loads ahead of empties.

 

Trains included a “Black Mountain Local” that simulated bringing in the previous night’s haul from the non-existent upper-deck tipples, an L&N “CV Local” to handle the L&N’s trackage-rights agreements at two tipples, Train 61/60 the “St Charles Local” bringing empty hoppers out of Andover (staging) and returning with loads, and the “St Charles Switcher” working St Charles area tipples and the Baileys Trace Branch to Mayflower. With the “veteran mode” rules in effect, even the simplest of trains still took a while to operate. Just the movement of the Black Mountain Local out of the helix (including a stop to reset the semaphore) and blocking in the three-track yard took a full scale hour (15 minutes real-time). Despite the simplicity of the St Charles Local’s job (bring empties, pick up loads), the yard’s prototypically small size creates the need to use the tracks and wye creatively to swap out cuts, and the instruction that all empties (in this case empty covered hoppers) have to go behind the loads, drives the sequence of picking up cuts.

Growling L&N C420 1317 plied the Southern’s rails without incident with Stuart at the throttle, but his luck was not to hold when he took the throttle for the St Charles Switcher with GP38AC 2877 and GP35 2649 at his control. Let’s just say that there is a certain switch at Mayflower that 2649 decided it needed to jump every time, and it only needed to cross that switch 18 times to work the tipple. Despite several breaks to ensure proper gauge and freedom of motion in 2649’s trucks and tweaking some spots in the switch with a gauge and pair of pliers, 2649 was determined to stay on the ground. Of course, now that the session is over, 2649 navigates that switch just fine… sigh. I still have a long way to go until things are bulletproof.

There were several “firsts” in this session:

• First 3-operator session
• First use of the new semaphore in St Charles
• First use of the new “fusees” I’m installing at all the grade crossings
• First use of the new-and-improved crew assignment board
• First time a “tipple” has been in place at Baker (a new mock-up)
• First use of a new “speed-retarding system” on the steep portions of the St Charles Yard (spaced-out monofilament line)
• First use of the new “safety slogans”… and no one was seriously hurt 😉

And of course some areas for improvement and “lessons learned”:

• Too many derailments–I still need to improve my trackwork to make it bulletproof
• I need to make blocking instructions more prominent if I want them to be followed
• I don’t think the use of the train-order semaphore in St Charles is as understandable as it needs to be
• I still need to work on the crew assignments to better balance how much each operator works