Three Operators

Yesterday, I held an operating session for the first time with 3 operators. Both Eric and Jack had a couple of operating sessions under their belt and I had 3 throttles so it was time to up the ante. Jack had not seen the layout in a while so I walked him through the changes in West Staging and the Rt 30 overpass. I gave him a DT-402 and put him in charge of the eastbound traffic coming from Pittsburgh (West Staging).

Eric took the other DT-402 throttle and handled the westbound traffic (from East Staging / Greensburg). Again, we basically alternated traffic rather than run to a schedule. While this more or less worked, Jack commented at the end of the session that it was helpful to know ahead of time the sequence of trains. We did a little work with the P&LE interchange but never brought out the train that was on the P&LE staging track. Jack handled this train and had become pretty good at switching East McKeesport but I again failed to work in the West Penn Power or May Stern spurs.

I took the new UT-4 throttle and my usual job as Irwin yardmaster. I like the UT-4 for this situation where I am using a single engine and don't have to change addresses. I am not crazy about the hardware reverse switch as opposed to the soft switches in the DT-402s.

One of the challenges I've had before is trying to switch the industries in Irwin and on the Herminie mine spur from the Irwin yard. While Eric was waiting for Jack to move an eastbound local, I had him switch the Heinz and LAS Fabrics spurs. I pulled the cars from mine but left empty tracks for a while until I could take the next train over. Not ideal. An we missed the Irwin Industries track again.

Overall the session was a success. I only had about 90 minutes before the session to get things staged and I pulled a few cars (good move) and quickly arranged the staged trains (not-so-good, should have been more careful in the makeup of a couple of the trains). The Irwin yard became the choke point and a couple of times both mainline operators were waiting for the yardmaster - me! - to get caught up.

On the positive, the layout easily supports 3 people. I definitely need to fix the spotty track and make sure all the cars on the layout meet specs. Most of the bad orders are gondolas or hoppers that are underweight. I have too many freight cars to leave these on the tracks. Finally, I need a specific train sequence before the next operating session.

Getting closer.