All the stars and planets aligned last Sunday evening and we had one of the biggest operating crews we’ve had in a long time. We’ve gained a couple new regular/semi-regular operators (Ewen and Chris), Ed was back on the Island from Ontario, and Brian made his return from his long summer break. So with the other regulars (Greg, Ken, Derwin, and myself) we had a full room!
Since we had such a large crew I decided to try something a little different. Rather than adding a milk train or passenger run I thought a local operator in Kenville & Derwin’s Drop might make things run smoother. It seemed to, although other problems kept me too busy to really notice.
Brian wanted to try something different so he ran the local switcher in Stevenville, Ken took his usual position as local switcher in Chappellton, Greg took the new job switching Kenville and Derwin’s Drop, Ed ran the West/East Wayfreight, Chris ran the East/West Wayfreight (both rookies at the jobs but they did a great job!), Ewen ran the Interchange, Derwin had the largest trains of the evening with the Transfer runs, and I ran the Coal train. Fortunately the coal train is never very large so it could sit on sidings while I was troubleshooting the throttle incidents we were having.
Everyone managed to work well in the relatively tight quarters of the BS&T. The aisles are about 24″ minimum, where the is usually only one operator working an area. Where people could be operating back to back the aisles are about 30″. Here we see Derwin, Ewen, Ed (Watch Your Head Ed!), and Ken working the east side of the layout. Derwin’s just arrived with the Transfer from Bayside. He and Ewen now have to trade cars (Wholeinthall to Bayside cars for Bayside to Wholeinthall cars) and put away the cars destined for Tinewater. Ed is on his return run with the 2nd half of the East Wayfreight and Ken is busy putting away cars in Chappellton.
I didn’t get a photo of Greg (he’s behind me in both pictures working Kenville and Derwin’s Drop). The West side of the layout is definitely less crowded at this point. Brian is busy putting away cars in Stevenville and Chris is building the 2nd half of the West Wayfreight. If you look closely you can see that Brian’s throttle is plugged into a telephone cable hanging over the layout skirting. This was a makeshift solution to some throttle problems we experienced on this side of the room.
It’s not often we have this many operators on the BS&T so it was inevitable that something would go wrong. It was also the first time in a while that we’ve used more than one or two tethered throttles. Things were going quite smoothly until Derwin’s phone battery died and he had to use a tethered throttle. He was in the same general area as Brian (also using a tethered throttle). The throttle displays would flash when they turned the speed dial and they had no control of their train. So one would unplug their throttle for a few minutes while the other would do some work. This slowed things down considerably!
The other problem we had was with a telephone/XPA throttle. Every once in a while it would lose connection with the system. It seemed to happen when the two tethered throttles would exhibit their problems. Very strange.
At break time I ran a separate throttle cable from the command station to Stevenville where Brian was working and changed the system address of the problematic XPA. These solutions appeared to work since the second half of the session went without a hitch.
I suspect that the tethered throttle problem was related to the lightweight telephone wire I used to run my throttle bus. I think there was too much power loss close to the end of the run, where the two throttles were located. So I purchased some heavy telephone wire and some RJ11 plugs and re-wired the throttle bus. I tried two throttles in the same locations and could not replicate the problem, so maybe I have it resolved. We’ll find out next week.
The XPA that caused problems was a new one I purchased used. I have no idea what it’s system address was, but changing it to an address that I knew was not in use seemed to work. Perhaps it had an address that was duplicated on my layout. Hopefully that was the problem.
Anyway, throttle issues aside, I think we had a great time! Folks seemed to enjoy themselves and didn’t mind the extra waits while the issues were addressed.
Progress on the layout this week… Re-wired the throttle bus and began adding a new business in Stevenville. I won’t say too much about the new business for now, other than to say that it will continue the tradition of being named after people in the group.
Later!
Scott
Thanks for the great time. I will see you all next summer.
Cheers
Ed