Last night marked another successful operating session on the St Charles Branch–the first with the scenery base in place and perhaps the last lower-deck only session. We ran a full 1968 session with three trains, all led by aging first-gen power. First up was the L&N’s CV Local with Patrick at the controls and Rick making his debut as a conductor. A pair of loads picked up at the trailing point operation at Maness (off the layout) gave the crew a little extra to work around all shift. While the CV Local was up the Bailey’s Creek Branch, I ran Southern Train 61, brining in a couple dozen empties from Andover and picking up last night’s loads from the tiny yard at St Charles. For the first time, train 61 was led by a trio of grungy F-units.

After waiting a bit for the slower-than-normal work of train 61 to finish up in St Charles, the CV Local tied up in Pennington staging before Patrick and Rick fired up the pair of local F-units for the Southern’s St Charles Switcher. Blocking their train in the yard, the crew set out to work four loaders including the two new stand-in mock-ups in St Charles. The job took 8 fast-clock hours to complete due to all four operations being stub-ended and requiring run-arounds and removal of loads before spotting empties–’twas the lot of those who worked this line!

“Firsts” and experiments for this session

• First session with zero derailments from poor track or cars (we did have an operator-induced derailment, but I won’t say who…)
• Working automatic crossing signals in St Charles (train 61 had them ringing for a good 20 minutes straight… delightful!)
• Finished coal loads instead of just foam
• Four actual loaders (mock-ups) to work instead of just tracks
• Complete set of first-gen power (5 Southern F-units and 1 L&N RS3)
• First operational use of the many new brush-based handbrakes
• First session with a full scenery base and ballast
• Cranked the momentum up about 50% from last time–made train handling more realistic and engaging (I think)

Areas for improvement:

• The 4:1 fast clock is putting too much time-pressure on crews–to keep the relaxed atmosphere, I’ll be dropping the fast clock to 3:1