It might still be about 3 weeks until Halloween but some crazy gremlins haunted the layout today.
It had been about 6 months since the last session. Some of the track was shockingly oxidized and dirty. It took me about an hour to clean up the track and wheels. But all was ready when the operators arrived.
Previous operators Len White, John Steitz, Ben Sullivan and Kelly Regan joined two first timers, Phil Taylor and Bill Mosteller. They got right to work.
The first crew ran pretty well except that engine Haupt had some issues about half way through. So I swapped it out with McCallum.
Meanwhile crew two with Engine Fury proceeded well until the first gremlin struck. One of the axles on car 1445 fell out of its truck while switching Aquia Landing. This truck is an arch bar truck that I scratch built. A glue joint between the side frame and bolster failed allowing the side frame to flex and wheel to fall out. It was a simple fix to re-glue the failed joint. This failure never happened before.
Later as that train arrived in Falmouth the draw bar between Fury's tender and engine fell off. This was also an easy fix. It seems that the screw that holds the draw bar had loosened. This also never happened before but again was an easy fix,
Finally, as crew 2 were wrapping up their run for the day, their train stalled in the Clozet tunnel. It was very perplexing as the engine was responding to throttle and seemed normal. It turns out that there was another locomotive in the tunnel. Somehow Engine Whiton was inadvertently energized and left the engine shed. It derailed as it passed the turnout to the engine shed, but continued riding the ties until it entered the tunnel and collided with the other train. I don't think anything like this has happened before. Was it a Halloween ghost train or a rebel attempt to highjack the railroad?
Other than that, it was a fun session.
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