Yesterday was a great operating session on the St Charles Branch full of old friends and some new milestones! First, my good friend Stuart was in town, so he and local good friend Patrick came over for a 3-person ops session. We ran three of four scheduled trains, including the Black Mountain Local which made a run to the new Gin Creek Branch and Kemmerer Gem No.2 tipple on the upper deck–this was the first use of the upper deck in an ops session which is exciting. The branch is a blast to switch because the only run-around is the tipple track at Kemmergem, the tail track is short (but not annoying short… it’ll hold 2 locos and 2 hoppers), and there’s a small loader on a facing-point stub switch at the end of the branch. It means placing the caboose and cars for the small loader behind the empties on the tipple track, moving the locos to the other end, and using the string of loads and empties to work the stub tracks and push the caboose and small tipple loads onto the main where the train has to back up the branch to get them. Takes some thinking. It’s also awesome to work the tracks at eye level where you really get a railfan’s perspective! I also finally have enough tipples to justify two Southern mine runs plus the L&N’s mine run which means there’s really no “bad job” on the layout–you’re doing switching no matter what, and you’re either working the tipples or handling long cuts of hoppers around S-curves and wyes with a trio of units and too few yard tracks (also challenging).

 

We cut the ops session short to head over to an open house for Bob Bandy who lives nearby and has an enormous and beautifully done western-themed layout. While there, I ran into a couple more old friends who used to operate on my previous layout, Nathan and Seth. They came over after we were done at Bob’s and ran the last train (St. Charles Switcher to Mayflower). I think a good time was had by all.

Notable “firsts”:

• First use of the upper deck!
• First official use of “yard limits” to control movements in St Charles–the rule on the fascia simply says “yard limit: proceed at restricted speed–coordinate movements with other train crews”
• First “meet” of two trains during an ops session. The schedule is designed to avoid having two trains in the same area at the same time. However, the yard limit came in handy when Train 61 (St Charles Local) was a little long working St Charles. Using one of the yard tracks as an impromptu passing siding, 61 cleared the main and enabled the L&N’s CV Local to get back to Pennington without too much delay after completing its work at Mayflower
• First use of a Digitrax UT6 during an ops session. It’s got some great features that make it more capable than a UT4 (my normal throttle), but having no “stop” point on the knob is tricky with so much momentum built into the decoders–not a show stopper, but it will take some getting used to

Learning points and observations:

• The 3:1 fast clock continues to work well and keeps crews from rushing
• I tried to give the St Charles Local a single tipple to switch to keep things more interesting, but there really isn’t time in the timetable (based on the real-world timetable)–I’ll probably stick with just drop offs and pick ups for future runs which still makes for an interesting train due to the wye and limited yard tracks available
• The Gin Creek Branch on the upper deck still needs some refinement of the trackwork. One switch was causing one locomotive to consistently derail–this was remedied with the installation of a guard rail mid-session, but there was still a bit more “clicking” over certain sections of track that I want fixed before installing scenery

This session left me super motivated to keep extending the tracks on the upper deck, though I may pause to rough in the scenery around Kemmergem first. But first, I’ll be off to the Colorado Railroad Prototype Modeler’s meet (RPM meet) in Greely, CO next week where I look forward to taking over at least a chunk of the modeling area with Appalachian coal field models… I hope Patrick brings some of his Chessie and early CSX hoppers so we can complete the infiltration.