Held the first operating session on the KLR after many months of rebuilding and changes. While I had intended to chronicle the changes here, I didn't, but rather have been working at a fast pace to get the layout ready for the 2014 NMRA Convention in Cleveland in a few months.  Operations went fairly smoothly, and pointed out several areas that I had suspected as I built the layout.  The most obvious was the need for more yard tracks and/or longer yard tracks. With my current configuration, I can only build one train at a time, which is OK but expanding the yard at some point in the future will change this.  Other points that I learned and pass along:

- there's always one engine that tests well the days before but then gives the railroad fits when it comes time to run. Although wheels and track were cleaned prior to ops, this engine shell seems to have developed a tight fit against the mechanism or pickup is interrupted. Time to take it to the shops and open her up.

- always use the longest coupler stick possible. The use of dental tools to pick the coupler is only good when the train is in front of you, but when you have to reach over industries and track, a nice 12-inch stick is better.

- I didn't pay enough attention to one industry when placing loading spots, which while the centerbeam flat cars fit side by side, their isn't enough room to couple them to the engine given the radius of swing that these longs cars need.  Should have caught that much earlier.  Solution is that the lumber yard will now only be permitted to receive one centerbeam and the other two spots will need thrall box cars.  Guess I need to build another industry to receive all of the centerbeams I have accumulated.

- Last annoying find was that when I placed my curtain to hide the underside of the layout, I must have tweaked a few connections to one of my industry tracks, as when we went to run there, no power could be found anywhere. Checked an adjacent track that comes off of this switch and there was power. So I need to remove the valence and re-trace the wiring.

- Use of a switch list was fine for my purposes. It will likely change in the future, but for now, good way to operate.

So in summary, the layout is almost there as far as having people come in for the layout tours. Have some new operators who enjoyed operating on it and now we will hold several more practice sessions to tweak the operations before July rolls around.  Pictures to come in following posts.