Good operating session and Kadee magnets

The session last night with Eric went very well. We took our time so that both of us were on the same page with the current train and next step in the sequence. We also started defining some rules of operation, like stopping at the yard limit for clearance to work the Irwin yard lead track and exchange cars. In two instances, Eric waiting at the yard entrance allowed me to push just one more car on the train for him to deliver on down the line.

That worked until I put 3 Pittsburgh bound cars on the local trick that was going out to East McKeesport and coming back. In other words, it was not proceeding to Pittsburgh! Ugh. I caught the mistake before he assembled the train so I just had him leave the 3 cars and we were back on track.

The time table (sequence of trains) worked very well except where I listed the P&LE work, which was printed black characters on dark blue background and Eric skipped over it. OK, maybe make that row white characters on blue! I wanted to distinguish the P&LE work as separate (someday, this could be a dedicated operator) and by using the blue background it hopefully provides the trigger of the Erie bound waybills being blue.

Traffic was busier than usual in the Irwin yard which was good and I was able to try the 4 Kadee delayed uncouplers I added to the yard tracks that I had laying around from previous layouts. These worked very well on 3 of the tracks but one was too high and derailing some cars so I quickly removed it and used the Rix tool on that track.

Overall, the new paperwork was a success and at the end of the evening, Eric pointed to the clipboard with the timetable and asked, "How did you come up with all of this?" Lots of reading, a little experience from Dave Holl's operating sessions in the late 90s and some help from virtual friends on TrainLife and the CarCards group. Oh, and a flash of inspiration yesterday!