(L to R) Tim, Will, David and Fred pose by Brooke |
Tim Laskey and David Betz switch train 8 at Falmouth |
Lauren Baker and George Payne build train 7 at Falmouth |
Amby Nangeroni ran PoLA on his own and had his hands full. He is supervised by Roux, official dog of the USMRR Aquia Line |
This was an experienced crew and they ran the railroad expertly. It was fun to watch them work.
I managed the dispatcher's desk and maintained a train sheet for the first time on the Aquia Line. We ran an extra train, so I had to write some train orders. The crews reported OS verbally since the telegraph system is not yet operational.
Meanwhile Amby Nageroni worked PoLA. He had his hands full as a one-man crew and wasn't able to finish the job before he had to head home.
In the debrief we discussed the various options for expanding the layout. Amby and Eric like the redesign v28d with the long peninsula, While George, Lauren , Tim, Terry, Chase (my son) and Alicia all prefer the Fredericksburg Extension. It's unclear which plan Roux prefers. To compare plans see the Fredericksburg Extension plan here. The alternative, V28d, is shown below.
Today we saw a situation where a longer mainline of V28d would make more interesting operation. That is when an inferior train is late. The superior train can leap frog ahead of the time table as long as it maintains a 10 delay. Inferior trains that are late must be especially careful. Resolving this situation would work better, i.e. with more skin in the game, if there were additional stations to jump to. Also, A longer run would also allow more trains on the RR at one time. So running extras would be much easier to accommodate and might be routine.
The main drawback of V28d is that we lose the distinct Burnside Wharf switching area.
It's a tough call. I'm still undecided. But, I will say that operation sessions like this on the Aquia Line convince me that any option of the Aquia Line is preferable to the other more modern ideas I have considered. I intentionally lined up train 7 with nine cars today and the challenges of working longer trains on the Aquia Line convinced me that I need to build longer sidings to accommodate ten-car trains. TT&TO with ten car trains will make for very interesting op sessions.
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Signal rules for extra train |
First time we tried maintaining a train sheet for the session. The telegraph is not operational; so crews verbally OS'ed, at least some of the time. |
Terry working on the 2-8-0 |
On Friday, Terry Terrance stopped by to provide some technical advice on disassembling an O scale Weaver 2-8-0 for conversion to P48. I am doing some experimenting with P48, mostly out of curiosity. I don't expect to build a large P48 layout in the future.
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Version 28d |