Tuesday Night's Operating Session - A New Possible Format?

Greetings followers of the Atlantic Pacific Railroad and my blog!

As many of you know, I host operating sessions on my railroad. I run trains with a great group of guys and all of us have a good time. There's conversation, jokes and of course, the usual banter amongst friends. We do run trains and that's the fun part. 

There are three operating layouts in our group. One operator (Bob) uses a switch list on paper. It's very specific and the operator must study the industry in order to move the cars needed from the list. . His layout is the largest of the three. It's more like tremendous and takes up the entire basement which I think is about 30' x 60' (could be larger in the width). The second layout (Steve) is quite larger than mine. His layout and my layout do not use paperwork. He is adding signals to his railroad and will eventually have a dispatcher to run the railroad via radio. 

My layout runs with a dispatcher and a yardmaster. When I host a session, it runs well for the most part. I can get distracted when others ask questions or not familiar with parts of the railroad, which is understandable since I don't as host as often. Steve is our head gatherer and hosts the most. Last weekend Bob hosted and while he does use the paper switch list, he had one train that had to move first in order for the rest of the railroad to move. I thought that was a neat idea as it kept trains moving. When I host, depending on who is present, an operator of a train may have to wait and some just like to run a train then leave. 

My friend NJ John (the other John is in GA as I refer to him in my blogs quite often), is my senior operator and knows the railroad as well as I do (at times I think he knows it better than me). We discussed this and while I'm not a fan of paper or switch lists, I want the railroad to run with less down time between trains, as long as I have the operators to move trains.

I came up with a plan and last night I put it to the test. I was supposed to have a total of 6 people including myself, and I wanted a selected group of individuals. The main reason is that none of them are or were railroaders!. One could not make it and the other one cancelled on me at the last minute, something about doing things for work. Guess he needs to get his priorities in order, ya think? This just made me do both dispatch and yardmaster. With the other 3 guys running trains and the yard within a few steps it was not an issue.

Here's what I did. I put the jobs on index cards with the engine number, type of job and location on the railroad. One new twist, if you want to call it that was to have a pair of engines come up from the engine terminal and head to the yard, pick up a train and head to staging. This was John's idea as the engine terminal has never been used in an op session. Definitely not to a lack of people, just never entered into the equation.

The yard had a pair of RS units and two Geeps to use for local industries...

The first three assignments, if you know my industries are switched off the main. No one needs to wait coming from or going to staging. The first job goes to the yard light and then heads to staging. 

The next job, once there was an operator, would come from staging and head right to the power plant. No down time since there weren't trains ahead of him, and as long as he had the signals, went right to work. 

This last job, the operator went right to work, grabbed an engine and went out to get the cars, brought them back to the yard. He picked up the outbound cars, went back out, and I sorted them after he left the yard. He could have taken the outbound with him. Since there were just 3 operators, it didn't hold up anyone else...

  

In a matter of just under two hours, with three train operators, all six jobs were worked. Below are some random shots of last nights session...

The end result was that all three operators were constantly moving and running trains. I think John got more of a workout, retrieving engines and returning engines to the terminal and freight yard. It was his idea, so why not let him run with it! 

The assessment at the end of the session was that trains moved, it was enjoyable, the cards with all of the information eliminated many questions each operator may have had when running his train. The dispatcher and yardmaster had down time since trains flowed. Even if I did have a yardmaster, he wouldn't have been that busy. Since there wasn't a yardmaster, when John brought up his engines I pointed out the outbound train and he took it from there. Same thing when he brought up a train from staging for the yard. He dropped the cars, cut the engines and took them back to the engine terminal. I stood around a lot as once trains were moving, there was nothing to do but watch my railroad in action. Very cool!

As a bonus, John brought over some of his new UP motive power, working to replicate a UP engine move from real life...

Here's a short video of his new engines..

All of my night op sessions end with some munchies and drinks (non-alcoholic). Thanks to the guys that helped make this test a success!