First Official Operating Session

Trains were running reasonably well...check. Enough scenery to sketch the illusion of towns and industries...check. Draft of an operating scheme....check. Bruce coming over last Sunday....time for the first official operating session!
AS I said, I had an operating scheme that I thought would work (see the blog post Sketching An Operations Plan) so all I had to do was get the cars on the layout lined up to support the operations plan. Yeah, not an easy task. I had to go through all the waybills which describe where the car is supposed to be routed - 51 not counting the 4 cars on the RIP track and the 6 I pulled off because they were not running AND the RIP track is full (need to get on the Maintenance Department).

Preparing for the operating session

As you can see from the photo, I had to place all the car cards & waybills along the layout and I had 3 cheat sheets to match cars with routes with industries. Took a couple of hours but I felt it was set up as well as could be. I also created a worksheet for the Yardmaster. This would help the Yardmaster put cars on the right yard track and in the correct order.

Yardmasters worksheet

So, how did it work? Remarkably well. With the exception of the curve into Herminie, the cars stayed on the track. More than a few times, we had to nudge the engines to get the trains rolling. Working the yard for the first time, I struggled to keep up with the traffic (note to self - 8 cars on the morning train from Altoona is too much and needs to be in order!) Bruce ran the ALT-12 from Altoon to reacquaint himself with the throttles (good idea for newbies) and ran one eastbound and one westbound train following the the pickup (p/u) and setout (s/o) instructions with some interesting switching moves. We only managed to run 3 of the 9 scheduled trains in a 3 hour operating session but for a first run, I was thrilled!
In addition, we validated the layout design meeting my operating desires. At the end, Bruce said he understood better what I wanted to accomplish and wondered if he could have done something different to further those goals. Given the space constraints, I doubt it.I am very happy with what we created together and I think it will continue to provide years of fun!