It's very usual for me to be able to work on the layout or ran trains much before the holidays but this year has been a little different. Not only did I get a lot of basic scenery done around Uniontown and Herminie, but I was able to go through 3 complete cycles of the operating session. The weekend before Christmas, Bruce came over and the trains were running exceptionally well. Based on the feedback from the Car Card & Waybill group on Yahoo, we picked up where things were left off with the cars in the yard in between their destinations. All the other cars in the sidings and staging were flipped to the next step in the 4 cycles.
 |
| Herminie scenery extended past the company hoiuses |
Things worked out rather well. All the "running" problems were due to open switches or other operator mistakes - so that is a good sign about the trackwork and condition of the locomotives and rolling stock. As the yardmaster and dispatcher, I mixed up the sequence of trains a couple of times and once annulled one train because it would have left the yard with no cars but it should have picked up loaded hoppers at the mine. Oh, well, the prototype did that at times as well.
I just finished up the 3rd session, running solo this time, and again the session seemed reasonably balanced at the end of the complete timetable. One of the staging trains was at capacity and I left one car bound for the P&LE in the Irwin Yard because the interchange was at capacity. Other than problems with a single engine - 8604 was stuttering and stopping so I pulled it off - accidentally running the wrong train sequence and a few open switches, everything ran well. I am learning some shortcuts and options to improve the session for the operators.
 |
| Uniontown scenery adds much needed depth |
I got some great gifts from Lisa and the kids for the train and I have an interesting story about a DCC issue I encountered but I will save that for the next blog,
No comments:
Post a Comment