Weekend Update - Preparing For An Operating Session

Greetings followers of the Atlantic Pacific Railroad and my blog!

Many of you know that besides the participation in the virtual operating sessions I have with my Penn Central Railroad friends, I'm part of a non-group group and am one of three who will host an operating session. We usually have two a month. One is on the last Sunday of the month and then we hold a combination work/operating session on a Wednesday afternoon. Both sessions are fun and of course, generate revenue for the railroads (in a ridiculous fictitious way).

We had a mid-month work session last Wednesday afternoon, where some of us worked on the hosts scenery, others worked on moving some freight cars out of the way, while others were there as verbal support...

As I was saying my good-bye to many, I told our fearless leader that his railroad made no money and I suggested we do another Wednesday night operating session since the one I hosted in May was very successful. I checked with management to make sure we don't have anything that would conflict in the evening, and the event is a go!

There's a lot to do in order to get the layout 'staged' for a session. First thing I had to do was to reset layout. Here's what the freight yard looked like at the end of the session on May 22nd.

It was wiped out by the yardmaster! We moved over 100+ cars that were in the yard at the start of the session. This needed to be re-staged. I brought up some freight trains that were in the yard and took off a couple cars from each. Also, some of the industries didn't have enough freight cars for the start of the session, and those industries received freight cars. 

Here's what the freight yard looks like after about an hour or two of moving trains around. 

 There's one set of engines the yardmaster will use to make up a train to head out. This is strictly an outbound train and will head to staging. 

 The caboose track is ready as well as some of the west side classification tracks.

 Box cars, reefers, Auto box cars and Centerbeam cars are ready to go.

The east side classification tracks have some covered hoppers, gondola and tank cars to head out as well.

Now that the freight yard has some cars that can be used to start the session, we need to see what we have in staging that can be used for the session. 

This is the east side of south staging. We have the steel train and coal train staged.

Next we see a mixed freight train as well as the auto rack train. 

We have behind the coal a mixed freight train. The lower level staging tracks in some areas are more than 30 feet in length and can hold 2 trains, depending on the train length. 

This is a view of the east side of north staging. 

A view of both north and south staging. This photo was taken right below the dispatchers area. 

The west side of north staging. There are 7 sets of trains that are on these tracks. On the far right is the juice train and the middle track has the intermodal train. 

So where do we store the rest of the freight cars? Below the main section of the layout are 8 sets of stub staging tracks, four on each side. On these tracks I'll store freight cars not in use, or ones that I use for the virtual op sessions. This is the west side of the lower main section. The track with the set of AP engines is the lower level loop passing track. I use it to hold the TTX train. It comes out for someone running a train on my railroad for the first time and I put him with one of the senior operators. Then we run him all over the railroad thru the freight yard, passing sidings and both mainline tracks. Then we send him back down and return him to its original position. To the right of the AP engines are four tracks with engines and freight cars. There's approximately 25+ cars on those tracks. 

This is the east side of the lower level where I mainly store my Penn Central cars when I do my virtual op sessions. The last track holds the 86' auto rack cars. 

Of course no railroad would be complete if it didn't have some engines at the ready to bring into service, if needed. Richmond Hill Engine Terminal is ready for action!!

So what determines what moves during an operating session? The dispatch area, where I am the majority of sessions is posted so I know what to send, and when to send it. This is the list that I will use Wednesday evening. The lead engine for every train set is listed and what the majority of the train has in the trainset. 

Most of the trainsets have more than one engine on the train. In the DCC world, when you run more than one engine together, they have to be 'consisted' so they all move at once. If there is an issue during a session, and they need to be taken apart or 'deconsisted' due to a running issue, we need to take them out of consist. If you take them off the track and try to run them on another layout, they will not move. Some of the guys who don't have a layout and bring engines to run on our layouts forget to deconsist them. Then they get crazy, have to call us or come back to take them out of consist. The command station of the layout has a 'memory' that knows what engines run together. Here's how I keep track of what is in a consist. 

As of this posting, I'm ready to host Wednesday night. All that's left to do is do a quick sweep of the floor from some wiring I was doing, bring up the cooler, and then load it up with water and drinks that afternoon. I'll pick up some fruit salad, some cookies in the morning and we're ready! 

I'll try to post an after-action report and hopefully take some pics of the session.

Thanks for reading!