On Saturday 21st of June I hosted a group of model Railroaders from Hervey Bay. This group had traveled to Brisbane from Hervey Bay (some 450kms away) to participate in an Operations session. This was organised by a good mate of mine, Merv Bagnall who now resides in Hervey Bay and has been a coordinator of a model railroad group in that region for some time.
All up there were 12 people on the day and the ops session was a great success. This was also the first time I have trialed an afternoon ops session. We ran from 1pm - 5pm, then had BBQ before people departed.
This is the 6th consecutive monthly operations session. By doing regular sessions I am now learning the strengths and weakness's of the layout. All in all I'm very happy with the layout design. This seems to be working effectively and now that I've settled on the operations methodology and the ops hardware, each ops session is improving.
The gang: Steve, Merv, Malcolm, Matthew, Roger, Trev 1, Julie, Trev 2, Gavin, Harold and Ian
Operations
During the afternoon we ran 13 through freights, 4 locals, and 4 turns. For the session each guests was partnered with one of my regular operators. Thanks to Steve, Merv, Malcolm, Trev 1, Roger and Matthew for training the guests. This made life easy and I'm sure the Hervey bay crew appreciated it.
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| Trev 2 and Roger, guiding a BNSF Reefer train across Joso Trestle |
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| From the outside looking in!!!! Merv is checking the turnout alignment into the Eastern staging yard. |
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| Julie is all smiles as she switch's the limestone plant in Cheney |
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| The boys are switching both ends of Yardley yard in Spokane |
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| A BNSF intermodal is on the lower deck. Ian is operating this train with Rogers guidance. |
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| Malcolm, is checking the throttle settings as he switch's Boardman industries |
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| Ian bringing the BNSF Intermodal up grade just south of the Boise Paper plant in Walulla. At this point the head end of the intermodal has just crossed the Walulla river. |
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| Gavin is setting the turnouts ahead of his train |
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| All concentration as the switching moves in Boardman are figured out. |
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| Trev 2 is observing the action |
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| Matthew is offering instruction on switching Boardman, and a bit of history of the layout. |
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Its near 5pm and everybody is doing there last chores on the layout. Steve and Julie are bring a train upgrade at Hopper Junction for the last time on this session
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