March 11, 2026
March 2 saw op session #1. It was to be a trail run with 4 of us: John Garfield, Tom Turner, Allen Campbell, and myself.
Besides general cleanup, the following was done prior to the session:
Track indicators for the yard. One side is in line because an icehouse hides the rest of the switches.
Strips of masking tape left around the layout in case there were any operational issues, especially with the Fast Track switches.
Flashlights with new batteries were placed by the throttles.
JMRI manifests were run off for 6 trains and placed by the Gerber Yard.
Motive power was tested one more time. NOTHING MOVED!! GASP! Session was in two days, and everything was fine before I left on a weeklong trip. The problem turned out that one of the Easy DCC Single Zone shares had failed. Quick call to CVP got the bypass info I needed to get the layout running without it by running wire between a working one and the failed one.
Orientation started around 11 after we finished some delicious cinnamon buns that John brought. Since it was Allen’s first time on the layout, he and John decided to work together. Since all the counter in JMRI were reset to 1, the train was rather long and resulted in a full day of switching. Tom came later in the day and had a shorter train. We broke for lunch around one and then finished up at 5.
The variety of steam locos managed to find some problem switches and even 3 dead frogs. I’ll be going through all those blue-tagged areas to correct problems. The crews did a great job with only 6 cars being misdelivered – not bad for the first time. A track in the yard had been set aside for these cars. After the session, the cars were reassigned in JMRI to a different yard track. Unfortunately, I forgot to have my wife take a group photo.
It took a while to post this blob as my desktop computer decided to bite the dust and I had to reload all the programs on a new computer. Having all my data on a couple of disk drives that were just moved from the old computer to the new meant no lost files.
