Call Board

Before the session, the crew drew numbers to determine the bid order for jobs.  I volunteered Jeff Weymouth (who hangs out on the MRH forum occasioanlly) to run the staging yard since he was familiar with how it was set up.  For everybody else, the local and yard jobs received assigned crews, while the road pool rotated among the remaining trains as they were available to run.

Stuff Happens

Junction City yardmaster Jim French works a cut of cars on the lead as Raft River Turn engineer Duane Grey waits for his train to be assembled.  Ogden staging is on the bottom level directly behind Duane.  Staging ran OK without lighting in place, but will be nicer once the lights go in.

Lee Nicholas ran the 25th Street industrial lead.  Here he's sorting cars for spot at the branch's sub-yard.

Bill Hughes runs around his Milton Turn at its namesake siding.  The Raft River branch is directly below this location, but the Raft River job was scheduled at a different time to ensure crews didn't end up running into each other.

Lakeview guy Dave Vickers works with through train engineer Greg Brubaker to complete a block swap.  Dave got too efficient for his own good emptying the yard.  They are standing on the opposite side of the backdrop from the photo above.

Very nice, Rob.

Ops inspires more work and more ops!

There is nothing like an operating session! I've been lucky to have had many solid experiences over the years and I always look forward to the next crew call. I cannon recall a session where I did not bring back a new idea to use on a project or to file away for a future layout. 

Begin operating at an early stage of building and this will inspire owner and operator for the next session.

Eric

Punch List

Thanks for the comments Rick and Eric. 

Speaking of ops-inspired work - there were of course items to address, based on crew feedback.  This might give you future session hosts an idea of the kinds of things to expect.

• Junction City yardmaster Jim asked if one of the ground throws could be moved.  While the existing throw met all NMRA clearances, it was hard to reach on occasion without bumping his fingers into a nearby car when a through train occupied the adjacent main.  I later moved it about 3/8" to allow for 1:1 scale operator clearance.
• Jim also noted the SW1500 yard power set derailed when the footboard corners collided against each other during a shove around a curve.  There's not much space between these units, and even on a roughly 30" curve the slack can run in too far.  I added a long shank coupler to the rear of one switcher, which isn't obtrusive but gives enough clearance to avoid the problem.
• Staging operator Jeff wanted larger type on the waybill box dividers so they're easier to read.
• Lakeview yardmaster Dave suggested having additional waybill box dividers to keep track of cars being blocked for the various industries.
• 25th Street operator Lee suggested a blocking diagram for industries, so the crew can organize facing point and trailing point moves for the next shift.  He got a notepad and paper to make one up as he operated, which will be the basis of a new operating aid for the next session.
• Lee also thought the handoff between 25th Street and the Junction City yard would work better if there were set times for each crew to swap cars.  In addition, a formalized instruction will be added to clarify that 25th Street is responsible for running around inbound cars since that works more efficiently than if the yard guy runs around and shoves cars to the branch.  Absent such an instruction, Lee and Jim handled this backwards a few times before realizing how it would work best, and I had neglected to tell them beforehand.
• Pool crew Sam had a covered hopper that derailed, due to useen casting flash on the truck bolster that finally hung up on the underframe.  This was one of only about 4 bad order cars, so not bad for a first session with 300 plus cars of which many are new to this layout.

First Ops Punch List

Rob,

That's an impressively SHORT punch list!  I've participated as shakedown crew on a couple of sizeable layouts (in my former SF Bay Area life).  They generated far longer lists.  

CONGRATULATIONS!

Bill Decker