Op Session 24

 

Gerry, Tom and Ben

I organized a last minute operation session for Saturday when my plans for the weekend opened up and Gerry Fitzgerald said he would be in town. This was Ops Session 24 and the first of the new year. 

Gerry was joined by Amby Nangeroni, Paul Dolkos, John Steitz and first time Aquia Line operators Ben Sullivan, Tom Matty, Kelly Regan. With 7 people, we decided to run two trains with 3-man crews and one dispatcher.

Paul, John and Kelly ran one train, while Ben, Tom, and Jerry ran the other. John took a crack at dispatching, but it didn't take much to convince him to let Amby dispatch so he could take out a train.

John, Kelly and Paul

Things worked pretty well. Haupt and Fury seemed to run well. The telegraph fired right up and worked fine.  I saw a few derailments,  some operator induced. No specific bad orders were generated for the rolling stock. However, we did have some humidity contraction issues with the track in Falmouth.  Amby reminded me that this was the first winter op session for Falmouth. I have found that the layout needs a few seasons of humidity changes and tweaking to run the best despite us adding a whole house humidifier to our HVAC when we upgraded it last year.  To resolve some of the issues I had to trim the rail on some turnouts and the to the turntable. We will see if the trimmed rail leads to gaps that are too great in the summer when the wood swells. 

The switch stand for the double slip switch at Falmouth stopped working properly. After I examined it, I realized that the fulcrum for the throw rod popped out of one side of the stand. The only fix is to replace the switch stand. I built a new stand this evening and will install it tomorrow when the paint on it is cured.

Amby dispatching

The crews seemed to enjoy the random event cards. Most of the events did not have an appreciable effect on the operations but added considerable color to the session.  

Alicia made her signature chocolate brownies despite having pulled a muscle in her leg earlier in the day playing pickle ball. The guys loved them.