Op Session #14

Session #14 is in the books.

Overall it went very well, and didn't encounter many issues.

Then again we didn't have a full complement of crew, only about 4 at one time. So none of the through freights even left the staging yard.

Here are a few pics that I did manage to catch, but got too involved to get many more.

Train LRMP-W on the north end of Haskell.

After setting out the cars at El Dorado, LRMP-W passes the new house track at Ruston.

MPLR-W  just left the yard and heading north through Winnfield as it swings onto Tioga Jct.

The MPLR-W has just shoved it's setouts on the A/D tracks

Once the work is done, MPLR-W crossed the Ouachita River Bridge and throttles up.

I don't recall having any shorts due to locos shorting out on the PECO turnouts, a few did occur which were crew errors, me included.  Quin had a difficult time with a few new BLMA flat cars that was were thrown into service for the new industry at Ozark Irrigation.  I do believe that can be chalked up to the fact of BLMA wheels and the turnouts they were picking were in the yard at El Dorado, turnouts I that I did not shim?  I guess I'll look into doing that.

As for the track work re-alignment that I worked on all summer and since last November, I am happy to report that reports came back from the crews that the track work was good and smooth and ALL is good on that front!  So I now feel confident to start on some scenery, just not sure where?

Quin started out working El Dorado with the two new SW-1's I picked up.  While I was testing them before the session with good results, he was having issues with them stalling quite a bit.  So he switched back to the ex Rio Grande GP7 and had much better results.  Well after the session was over with I went back down to clean things up and decided to try the pair of SW-1's again.  I had no issue with them what so ever?  So it must have been that the tracks were still a dirty and got cleaned off by the time the session was over?  I'll keep playing with them for awhile l before I decide what to do with them.

While we didn't have many shorts in the main staging yard, I will say that in the 11th hour I picked up some cheap clear nail polish and painted the rails on the Atlas turnouts as I did have a few shorts beforehand.  I know this only a temporary fix, but there has been some discussions in my head with the inner voices about ripping up some if not all of the staging yard and redoing it with a better design?

This yard started out as nothing more than a staging yard for our expanding Bend Track modules back in the day.  The last time I rebuilt it and re-laid the track was in 1997 just before we went to the NMRA national.  After that show it was never used again until I started building the layout.   I made some minor modifications so that the whole yard wasn't a giant reverse loop and it has worked very well since, even with the old Atlas turnouts I used.

Thoughts will continue on this....

The upgrade from the Simplex to the Duplex system worked just fine and no one complained about NOT having to plug and unplug the throttles to gain or release control of the consists.  It was actually a pretty nice feature.

Due to not having a full complement of crews on hand, the Job Board and Seniority System was not implemented, however I think this will work if needed.

This brings me to an issue that has been chewing on me for a while now.  I've been toying with the idea of tearing down the layout, well at least paring it back to a more manageable size?  I know I wouldn't want to make it any bigger, but smaller is looking kind of nice lately?

There are several reasons for these thoughts.

1) Maintenance.

2) Work to get things setup and running

3) Maintenance.

4) Lack of being able to get anyone over to run an operating session.

5) And a number of other minor things.

While getting things up and running for this last session I needed to go back and re-program some locos, clean a few and adjust several cars.  I know this goes hand in hand with any layout, but this is, at least to me, a fair sized layout that can and does take a bit of work to maintain.

Now with that said, I do think I have passed a point of the major building and after all the work that I've done over the last year I may just be a bit burned out?  But I do not see myself without a layout, I'm just too much of a busy body not to have something to work on in my spare time.  So I've been toying with the idea of paring back the layout to a more manageable size, one where I could play trains by myself and if I can still get 3-4 others (mainly the core crew members) together once in awhile it might still be worth doing.

Even still, the layout will still need to be much bigger than a small peninsula or HCD layout.  If I can't do ops, then I will forego that idea.  Over the past year I have seen some very nice HO scale layouts that take up a bedroom of at least 10' x 10' and they've been geared towards operations.

But I just don't know if I can handle something that small without getting bored running in circles and having much shorter trains.

Decisions, decisions.....

I do know that I've had to cut back the length of my trains from when I first designed the layout, but looking back at that decision over the last 4 years, I have not regretted it.  In a way, shorter trains seem to work much better just due to the physical forces that are put upon them while switching.
Originally I had planned for around 25 cars per Local, but had to cut them down to 15 cars.  Now looking at working them during a session, it feels right.  

I know with a layout of my size and limited crews on hand, we can still operate and have a good time. What the four of us did this time was to just run the four manifests that feed cars to El Dorado yard where they're used to built the three local turns and get them sent on their way.  None of the Through trains even moved from the yard.   Which seemed to work out very well and was very relaxed?

And maybe this is what I need to focus on, maybe this is my answer?   Continue on the layout as planned, and when an op session is called for and only gets a small number of crew from now on, piss on it!  We'll just run the basic trains and work the locals in a relaxed manner and have fun?

Maybe I just need a bit of a break as well?

  

I can't see the damn tabs!

One issue I had with the tabs right after I first switched over to them was with empty open hoppers and empty woodchip hoppers.  I had to sit the tabs in the cars and this meant on the bottom of the cars.

May not seem like too big of a deal, but when the layout is set at 52", some of the crews couldn't seen into the cars, some had to stand on their tippy toes.

From my normal eye view

Standing on my toes.

This issue would pop up while staging and then during a session but was forgotten about soon after the session.

Well with the next session just around the corner, I decided to try and find a solution to this issue.  I thought about making some sort of a bridge from plastic or wood that could sit across the top of the hoppers. I also thought about using some of poster putty to hold the tabs in place?  All seemed to be more work than I wanted.

Last night I came up with a little something that might work? 

I spied one of the clear plastic covers that come in the MTL jewel cases.  The nice thing about this was it was clear and wouldn't stand out more than the tabs do.

So I cut a small section off and bent the ends down so they hung over the edges and placed the tab on top.  Not bad, but kind of bulky and the tab wanted to slide a bit.

So I kept playing around with this.  Pretty soon it hit me, let's make it narrower so the tab straddles it like they do over a roofwalk?

This seemed to work OK and it was much smaller, plus the tab couldn't slide around either.

So for now I think I'll give this a whirl and see how they ride throughout the session?  And like Steven said, if anyone knocks them off due to some rough switching, I guess that crew earns a turn to wear the Asshat award.

Pipe loads complete

Tonight I finally got the pipe loads completed for Ozark Irrigation.

I still need to get some strapping installed on the pipe, but at least I'll have some loads for the session instead of using our imagination.

Pipe Loads

Made some good progress today.  Labored on Labor Day.

I finished getting the cars staged and tabbed.

I got all the extra cars moved off the layout.

I re-typed some of the Train Instruction sheets and added the new industries.

Removed some of the passenger cars from the two Mail trains and added a few extra TOFC's.

Then I started making a few pipe loads for the flat cars that will serve Ozark Irrigation.

A few years ago I picked up a slug styrene round and square tubing from a seller on eBay called kdarr70.  He sells a lot of different types of styrene in bulk a lot cheaper than you can buy it from Evergreen or Plastruct.

Closing in on Op session 14

Last night I got off to a rough start staging the layout.  I generated a new Wheel Report and after getting the biggest share of the cars staged and tabbed, I noticed that something wrong.  On one sheet was calling for 14 cars, but on another version of that sheet, it was showing 13 cars?

So I opened the spreadsheet and starting digging through it.  Found it!  One of the sheets wasn't summing up all of the cells becuase I had added a couple of lines to one sheet and not to the other.  I can see now how important Copy & Paste is going to be with this.

Next I came across another issue, one sheet was incomplete.  I must have started working it over and never finished it or simply missed it. Grrr!  After about an hour or so I got things in order and went back down to finish staging the cars.  So we'll see how things work out in this session.

I still have a bunch of small time consuming things to do:

1. Finish getting the Town schematics printed off, these will show where to spot the cars since I don't have a lot buildings in place yet.
2. I need to re-do some of the train instructions so that they match with some of the new industries I've added.
3. I've got a bunch of stuff strewn across the layout that I'm planning to sell on eBay and/or the forums.  I found a huge box of older Atlas turnouts and snap track that I have no need of.
4. Clear off the workbench and get it cleaned up.
5. I need to get the throttles out of the box and get them ready to go.  I have only pulled out a couple to play with since I got them back from Digitrax and having them upgraded to Duplex and also need to get the batteries charged up.
6. I need to change out a few 48" fluorescent bulbs.
7. I still need to double check the Locomotive consists and make sure they're still running properly
8. Clean the tracks, again.....

I'm sure there are a ton of things that I'm not thinking of?

There are two things that I want to add to the Ops, one is the new Seniority Status for assigning or choosing the jobs on the layout.   This will based on a "per session" basis rather than "accumulative" basis for now until we see how it works.

The other thing is I plan to split the El Dorado Yard Job into two shifts.  There are 8 jobs per one full session that the crew has to deal with.   This way the crew isn't tied to the yard job the entire session and it creates another job.  

With me being off work for a month due to a minor leg injury, I'm hoping I will have more than enough time to get things done in a short order.  I'm itching to get the trains rolling and see how the new track arrangements and industries work out.

All Shimmed!

As of tonight I shimmed the last turnout!

Altogether I shimmed 50 turnouts on the main layout.  The ones I did not shim were the ones in the yard at El Dorado, the main yard and the ones in Malvern.

So far those have not shown any kind of issues with shorts or derailments, so I have left them for now.  The ones in the main yard I didn't touch as sometime I see ripping up portions of it and realigning at least one end and a few turnouts eventually.

After I shimmed each turnout I would check it with a lightweight car by running it back and forth, then I would run it through and force the trucks to the guardrail to see if I could get it to pick the frog point.  If they passed I would then run the train that found several shorts.

This was made up of two KATO E8's and IMRC FP7a.  The E's would normally be the ones that would find any shorts due to the longer three axle trucks.  The train consisted of one Wheels Of Time express baggage car with three axle trucks and metal wheels and 8 more TOFC cars, MTL and Trainworx.  The Trainworx cars have stock metal wheels.

After tonight I was able to run this train at or near prototype speeds without shorting anywhere.  next is to try running some of the 6 axle freight locos: SD40-2's, SD45, U30c's.

I have to admit the black styrene looks a lot better than the white did, but for some reason the black styrene seems to be a bit tougher to get glued in place?  But they are all done for now.

What's next?  Well the first thing, I need to get the layout and basement cleaned up.  Then I plan to get an ops session ready to go first, then I hope to get started on some scenery, starting with areas of the backdrop first. 

Can it be, no shorts?

Tonight I got the last of the turnouts shimmed on the south side of the layout from Winnfield to the three south turnouts in El Dorado yard.  As I added the shims to each one I kept a car handy to test the shims.  The car told me that the shims are working and are keeping the car from picking the frog points, but then came the true test......I ran the same train that I ran the other night that found three shorts. It has two KATO E8's on the point and several Trainworx 85' TOFC's with metal wheels in the consist.

NO SHORTS!!!!

Now this was just a test, so we'll see how it goes during an actual session?

Before starting on the rest of the turnouts I'm waiting for an order to arrive from MB Kleins in the next few days. The sly Mr. D. Foxx who follows the blog left me a comment asking if he could talk me into using Black styrene to shim the turnouts instead of the white? This way when I clean the tracks I won't be left with two white stripes.

D'oh!

On the ones that I have done now I went back with a black Sharpie.  Hopefully this will help as the guard rails are slightly below the railhead?  So now I have some sheets of 0.010" thick sheets of black styrene coming along with new blades.

The obvious things are always overlooked.....  

Shims!

I got a couple of turnouts filed and filled with epoxy which seemed to work, no shorts.  But because the Peco guard rails are a little sloppy I also decided to add some shims to them as I stated in my last post.

This helped in keeping the wheels from picking the frog point so I decided to try a few more.  On a couple that I added them to it also stopped a short that I was having on one.  So I made the decision to continue adding the shims to ALL the turnouts.  I figured this would be a good idea even if no shorts appeared as it helped to reduce the picking of the points.  If it also cured any shorting, then it would be a bonus, and if needed I'll go back and file and add the epoxy to any that need it. 

As of this post, I have added the shims to everyone of the turnouts on the south side of the layout over three nights.  That's 17 turnouts so far.  I also was able to get the shims added to the three turnouts on the south end of yard at El Dorado tonight.  While doing this today I snapped a few pics of how the process goes.

Here is the shim stock

I then cut them just a bit longer than the guard rails and set them in place and brush on a bit liquid cement, in this case I use MEK.  Using an old #17 blade I press the shim onto the guard rail until the glue evaporates.  This leaves the shim jutting past the guard rails.

Next I snap a toothpick in half and gently wedge the pointed end between the outer rail and the shim so it's pressed tight against the bent end of the guard rail. With the picks in place I brush a small amount of MEK on the ends of the shims and let them dry for a bit.

Once they're dry, at least 15 minutes, I'll take a sharp blade and gently trim the shims to the same height as the guard rails, being careful not to take too much off. I also carve the ends of the shims to match the profile of the guard rails. Afterwhich I've tested each of them with a car to make sure there's enough clearance and nothing is rubbing.

Once they're painted they'll blend in and they shouldn't even be seen.  Now I need to run a few trains to see if this has cured any shorts.