Yesterday afternoon I held the scheduled 2 monthly operations session on the UPBNSF Joint Division. There were 16 starters for the session.
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| Ops session Gang. Missing Duncan Cabassi (taking photo) and Jeff Grenfell, (running late) |
The session commenced at 2:30pm with the official opening of the Rogers Run branch line. A small opening ceremony was held, with the official cutting of the SIGN by no other than ROGER. In recognition of this momentous occassion , the UPBNSF JD management had a directors special available for the first run out to the PGE power plant and back.
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| Looking at PGE Loop |
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| Looking back at Boardman North |
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| None other than ..."ROGER" |
Upon completion of official ceremonies, the pre-start was held and then we proceeded to get into the operations session. We ran 22 trains for the session and considering that some of these trains take 2 hrs to complete that was no mean feat!! Just ask Steve O and John B how long the Millwood turn takes!!!
It was great to see Merv Bagnall run the first revenue train on the Rogers Run branch. Merv and I go back 35+ years and it was without question that he would get to engineer the first revenue train across the branch line.
Operations ran from 3:00pm to 6:30pm where we stopped for Pizza. Some said their good byes for the night and a few guys stayed on to do another hr of ops.
The night wasn't without a couple of issues. The premier train on the layout, the UP Potash train had multiple (and I mean multiple) uncoupling issues and the engines, all equipped with sound decided to play up going up the spiral. Considering this is the most expensive train on the layout in real dollars ...yours truly is not happy!!!! I've been onto the manufacturer of the potash cars regarding the uncoupling issue previously but to date have not had any success in remedying the problem. They are MT 1015's and the reliability on this freight car is abysmal.
I also had a similar issue with a unit grain train. On this occasion I just think the weight of the grain train cars is just way to light, so I'll try and address that issue over the coming days.
All in all outside of those frustrations, the ops session went pretty smoothly. Everybody seemed to enjoy themselves and the effort put into the paperwork side of administering the ops session is starting to pay off.
Photos below of Ops session.
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| Yardley |
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| BNSFMWB entering Yardley |
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| Jeff (Yardmaster) working out his moves for the next train. T2 (Far end) is performing the switching |
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| Cheney being switched by Alan |
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| Cheney |
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Anthony and Iain watching UPMEB
negotiate hangman curve |
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BNSFMWB passing Tyson meat
at Wallula East |
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Anthony and Darren working the
UPMEB at Wallula |
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Anthony and Darren working the
UPMEB at Boardman |
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Steve and Wayne switching
Boardman Industries |
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King Laurie (Dispatcher extraordinaire)
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| And then there is the paperwork! |
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| Your truly giving the pre start speech |
Thanks to all the participants. looking forward to the next ops in June.
