Preparing For An Operating Session on the A.P.R.R.

Greetings followers of the Atlantic Pacific Railroad!

As many of the followers know, I am involved with a great group of model railroaders as well as former and current railroad workers and some rail historians. All of the guys in this non-group group (as I like to call it) will go to visit all 3 layouts at various times of the year as those folks will host what we call operating sessions. There are 2 types of operating sessions. The end of the month session is normally held on the last Sunday of the month. It's a morning session which starts at 8:30AM at the diner closest to the host and after the 'food' we head to the hosts home to run trains. The hosts always offer some drinks (non-alcoholic) and snacks for everyone. The Mid-month session is a combination of a 'work session' if the layout needs some work like scenery, wiring, electronics, etc. as well as running trains on the layout. You can also bring an engine to run on that persons layout, provided it's DCC. 

I have the nice fortune to host both mind-month and end of the month sessions for January. This is due to one guy who is not available on Wednesdays to host due to afternoon commitments and the other guy who was in the middle of making some needed track repairs to his layout. In addition, the end of the month for January is always one week early due to the train show the end of the month in W. Springfield, MA. Add to it the fact they are predicting some snow and the one layout owner has a narrow road that gets buried with a snow storm. That leaves me....

Friday night I went into the train room to restage the session that I had this past Wednesday. Two of the guys were adding ties to my track work where I removed some due to the installation of flex track. Once completed, ballast will be added by some of the guys who have offered to help me. This is one area that I am still trying to grasp. I will get there sooner or later. 

The railroad needs a dispatcher and a yardmaster for a reasonable operating session. There are at least 3 guys who know the yard. One guy, when he is there, always runs the yard. There are two other guys who know the yard if he's not there. A dispatcher is always needed to route the trains. The last couple sessions I've had the 2 guys who know my railroad dispatch, which gave me some time to show some other people the railroad who are new to the layout or haven't been around and I give them a refresher course. 

There are only two pieces of paperwork needed to get the railroad running. First one is a train listing of the trains in staging. That includes both passenger and freight. This list will be updated later tonight as I finalize the trainsets for the Sunday session. Some of the trains have been moved since this image was taken. Track #1 in both North and South Staging are the ones closest to the center of the staging tracks. The empty tracks in the middle of both yards are the thru tracks. North staging is always entered from the east and departs to the west. South staging is entered from the west and departs to the east.

There is another list that is kept at the dispatchers panel and that is the consist list. In DCC, if you want to run more than one engine together, they need to be consisted. This is my list and it comes in handy, especially if someone wants to add an engine to an existing consist or wants to make one. 

The last thing I use during an operating session is this Harbor Freight Monitor with 2 cameras. Each camera is situated at the end of each yard. This way I can view the traffic below and also see who is not paying attention when moving trains. 

There are 2 sets of main staging tracks - 5 for North staging and 4 for South Staging. This is North staging....

This is South staging. There is always on track open on either staging area so we don't have any bottlenecks when trains are being moved. 

As you can see in North Staging I keep the nose of each train visible with the engine number so the guy running the train knows which one to grab. 

There is a track under the main part of the layout which I will use to hold a trainset or two. That is called 'Inside Loop Lower Level' Right now it has one TTX train which I always let the new person run. It's a dedicated train, no stops to switch industries or drop off cars. It runs the entire railroad, including the freight yard. This gives the new guy a view of the entire railroad while running the train. Besides, I like the look of a string of nothing but TTX box cars!! The other track for storage is around the bottom of the helix, and that holds the Amtrak Passenger train. 

Today I was in the train room and I reviewed the industries to make sure they were set for the session. One thing I noticed was a trainset missing that could be used to serve a major industry. There was a need for a train dedicated to Shapeless Steel. Normally, its a local job out of the yard. Engineer grabs an engine, picks up cars at the steel plant to drill or the yardmaster will build the train and send the engineer on his way. Now I have a train which has gondola cars, coil cars, flat cars that will service the industry. It will head to Rock Ridge freight yard, get dropped off, pick up what was brought over, and then head back to staging. This makes the run longer and more enjoyable. It also makes this job a two engineer assignment! 

I've assigned A.P.R.R. GP50 #500 for this assignment, and running long hood forward. There are, at present 9 cars on the train. More can be added if need be. I'm working on finding more gondola cars with loads at the next train show. 

This train will go down below on one of the main staging tracks and I will move one other train behind AP #361 TTX train. The second TTX train has been merged into one. 

We will debut the steel train at tomorrows session. I know it will be an eye opener as I've never had one and, I never run high hood engines! Should be an interesting time, weather permitting...