Final Op Session on PoLA

Amongst the remnants of the flood clean up we held the final op session, number 27, on PoLA today. We did not operate the Aquia Line.  Michael Spoor and Shawn Fenn were the final operators. Marty McGuirk and Doug Gurin stopped by to see the farewell.

Shawn is a happy conductor

Michael is the smiling engineer

The session started off a bit rough as the two GP-60s we used last time did not want to run properly. They exhibited all manner of DCC craziness from having the primer mover engine sounds racing at idle, intermittent operation, runaway engine, and loss of throttle response. We tried a to reboot and even reset the decoders, but nothing seemed to improve. This was very odd, since at the last session these engines ran great.

So we swapped the power for the PHL Genset with Tsunami 2 and a Keep Alive and all was well.

At the end of the session, Reverend Marty McGuirk offered a brief benediction,

"PoLA you served us well. Those who didn't like it can go to hell. Amen."

We then proceeded to pop open some beers and toasted the layout. With the ceremony out of the  way, the guys got to work boxing up freight cars.  Amazingly, we found boxes for almost all the cars.

Doug Gurin stopped by for the farewell.

With the cars put away it was time to eat. JD and JB, who were at the Nats-Dodgers game, stopped by to join us for dinner. JD brought the BBQ wings, I made steaks and veggies on the grill, Mom made 3-layer venetian cookies, and Alicia made a fresh fruit salad.

Michael didn't stay for dinner but Shawn did. He regaled us with tales of his wife's role as lead attorney for the FTC in the recent Facebook privacy lawsuit, in which the US Government prevailed.  Congrats to her and her tiny team of lawyers. They took on a giant and won.

After dinner JD and JB went home with some goodies in an effort to help me purge stuff. There's more where that came from.  We'll begin PoLA disassembly next week.

The layout is dead, long live the layout!

John Drye and JB Weilepp take home goodies. The small layout was an N Scale Civil War era layout I started building in 1991 and never finished because the engines were not good enough. JB got some donations for the NVNTRAK club.