The Future Of Some Of My Operating Sessions

Greetings followers of the Atlantic Pacific Railroad and my blog!

As many of you know, I participate in in running trains with a group of guys in my area. It's not a club, just a bunch of guys who get together twice a month to run trains. I'm one of three who have layouts. We call it a 'Gathering'. I was brought in sometime in 2012 and by the end of 2014 I had my layout up and running. The other two layouts run as follows: Our friend Bob runs his layout with specific switch lists given to an operator at the start of the session and works the job accordingly per the switch list. Steve, who has the other layout and is the head 'gatherer' of the group, runs without any paperwork. You pick a train, take it to a location based on the type of train and industry it serves, and switch out whatever cars you see fit. They must be 'like' cars; a tank car for a tank car, grain car for a grain car, etc.

My layout has been run like Steve's as I was not a fan of paperwork, and I thought it would be too cumbersome based on the layout size ( I have the smallest of the three). Last year I posted about a test of using something along the line of train orders. It seemed okay at the time; however I was doing double duty of dispatcher and yardmaster as well as watching 4 guys run trains. 

Fast forward to our current situation. There are no gatherings as crowds would be of at least 8-10 people and there's no place for the guys to have breakfast or lunch with the size of our groups. I do have 2 guys who I know well enough that I trust, and of course wear masks at my house, including myself. We've been running trains on my layout as they bring over some of their trains to run. We'll run some of my new trains or just to run anything in general. Since it was just the three of us, I decided to 'test' these train orders with both John and Norman this evening. There were 6 jobs to do. I had them printed and attached to 3x5 index cards and basically let both of them draw 2 cards each as the remaining 2 would be done if time allowed. My role was both dispatcher and yardmaster.

Below are copies of the train orders that were used this evening...

John and Norman proceeded to work a job, with each of them working 3 jobs. Originally I was going to run trains with them and handle a job. However, at the last I decided to let them do the jobs and I can route trains and switch the cars in the yards for them based on the job. Out of the 6 jobs, all of them went well. The only issue was one of the train orders wasn't as clear as it should be, and I explained what needed to be done, and the job was handled.

One of the trains was the Auto Rack Train. I had swapped out the pair of Bachmann SD40-2 engines on this train for a pair of Intermountain ES44DC engines with sound. 

Here's a couple of videos of the auto rack train heading down to staging after working the job at the auto rack terminal..

At the end of the session, we sat down and I asked both John and Norman what they thought about the train orders each of them had chosen. Both liked the concept and as I do more of these with them, get some of the bugs out, I'll be ready when the time comes to host operating sessions again with more than 2 other people. The big takeaway from tonight was discussing the 'ideal' operating session with these train order cards. It comes down to: Dispatcher, yardmaster and 3 solo engineers. A 4th engineer could be used as well. No conductors or helpers to do the work. 

Next week we're going to do it again. This time I'll have 6 new jobs for them to do and we'll see how it goes...

Thanks for reading!