Gentlemen,
I mentioned last week that I would be operating on a live steam park
sized system just outside Houston. I'll relate a couple of things.
First, despite reasonably mild temperatures, we did have a light rain
several times during the session. Not a big problem as we didn't have
to worry about electrical shorts anyplace. A car card system was used
and to start with, cars were moved by hand and just shoved from a car
barn to make up a train. A road engine, conductor's car and my car then
ushered a train of 6-9 cars around the area to various sidings. We had
a three man crew, in this case, I was the brakeman/switchman/virgin at
the tail end of the train, so I did get some walking in--maybe a couple
of miles. The switches were all sprung on the trailing side. This is
normally a really good thing---but there are times when it was dangerous
to do so. For instance if you pull part-way across the switch and then
back up you split the switch! Not good for a fairly heavy diesel. As
we've had in prior conversations about derailments, I can report that it
happened to us several times. Also I was supposed to spot a car at an
industrial spot, but then told not too--the track was so marginal we
might have derailed!
Operating there was a lot different cause the next train might be a half
mile away, so there was no crowding in the isles, no CV's to worry about
and you didn't run into someone block unless there was a meet. And yes
we did have to go in the hole for a passenger train! So overall it was
a pretty good experience and it seems like most groups in this area have
left the arena of running trains in a circle just like we have in the
smaller scales!
Sorry no S scale content as I was the only S guy there. A few were also
into HO, one in O hi-rail and the rest only dealt in the big stuff.
Bob Werre
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