The February Operations session on the layout was held on Saturday 27/2/16. The session was an afternoon session and the timing was prompted by the fact the I was hosting 3 people from Gladstone some 7 hrs drive away and we had to meet some appropriate timelines for there travel.
Nev, Brad and Anthony Left Gladstone at 4am in the morning and drove to Brisbane, arriving at my place at around 11:30am. We started with a meet and greet and then an overview of the layout as these guys had not been here before. I believe this was the first operations session for the guys and I wanted to present an entertaining and educational session.
Not all of my usual operations team were available this weekend so we got proceedings underway at about 12:15pm. I followed the tried and true method of partying a new operator up with one of the experienced guys. This usually works great and on Saturday there was no exception to the norm.
In attendance was: Tony Weber, Martyn Jenkins, Roger Henry, Steve Ord, Trev Phillips, Neville Ward, Brad Huston, Anthony Sopaios, Jeff Grenfell, Chelsea Grenfell, Wayne Meier, your truly.
Before everybody arrived I took the opportunity to take some starting photos (8) of the layout which shows the different areas of the layout. These were done following the layout from West to East.
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| Wallula |
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| Portland staging |
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| Boardman |
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| Snake River Canyon |
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| Cheney |
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| Spokane overview |
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| Yardley Yard |
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| Lakes and Empire |
The ops session ran from 12:15 pm until about 4:45 pm, when we called it quits to have a well earned BBQ sausage sizzle and a debrief on proceedings. All reports are that the guys from Gladstone had a great time and it would seem want to travel a bit more and participate in a few more sessions going forward.
The only drawback on the day was the heat. Lessons learnt - I need to hold these day time sessions in winter and night time sessions in summer.
Below are photos taken during the session.
