Now, getting to what I alluded to previously.  The guys in Moncton will be pleased to hear that Derwin earned some well-deserved demerits during Sunday’s operating session.  It seems he didn’t inspect his train before he left Tidewater heading back to Wholinthall with the CN Interchange.  A coupler let go on The Ridge and the rear section of his train rolled uncontrolled down grade.  The caboose and the next car derailed at the crossover causing little damage to the contents of the box car, but almost wrote off the caboose.

The cupola is laying on the ground, the handrail between the cars is at an odd angle, and the ladder is missing.  A search crew found it the next morning just after sunrise.  They had to use a helicopter to do an aerial survey of the area.  They couldn’t believe how far the ladder flew from the scene!

It’s also amazing that no one was injured!  Conductor Ima Lukyduk was heating up some soup and pouring coffee at the time.  “I was trown onta da cot dere an a bunch a pillows landed on top o me.  They kept me from gittin covered wit the soup and coffee I was heetin’ up!  I’m glad I sleep a lot an have a good mattress (from U & M Mattresses by the way) and lots a pillows on hand!”

The caboose is now at Fixum Car Repair in Chappellton where it will hopefully be repaired before the next operating session. They already used the crane to put the cupola back on the roof.  I really hope they straighten it up!

How many demerits do you think that’s worth!?

Scott

A regular Milk Train will now be part of the operations on the BS&T after receiving a couple milk station kits and 0-8-0 locomotive for Christmas. I’ve been working on the milk stations off and on and have them pretty much complete and in place on the layout.  There is a bit of scenery to be done around them.

The station in Kenville is a Tichy Train Group plastic kit.  It is a simple Milk Shed/Station but really adds to the area around the passenger station. The kit came with dozens of milk cans that I will be able to use as detail bits at all the milk stations.

The kit also came with a handcar shed and accessories that I placed to the left of the milk station.  It’s hard to get a clear photo through the trees and buildings.

The milk station is Derwin’s drop is almost across from the passenger station.  It is a Banta Model Works laser cut wood kit.  This kit was a real pleasure to build.  There was lots of strip wood – I didn’t have to worry about errors in cutting and wastage.  The walls were notched on both the sides and bottom to assure a good strong glue joint and squareness.

Because this structure is out in plain view I will be sure to add some extra scenery around it.

The power for this train is two Proto 2000 0-8-0 locomotives.  One of them has sound (Loksound).  I had hoped that the two of them together would have enough power to pull the 4 milk cars up the grade between Kenville and Derwin’s Drop.  Unfortunately they do not have quite enough weight to provide the required traction.  They start spinning about 1/2 way up the grade.  So the Kenville local switcher will provide helper service over The Ridge.

The milk train is heading through Stevenville on it’s evening return run from the dairy in Wholinthall.  The Transfer from Tidewater is waiting on the siding to get into Bayside.

The two locomotives rumble past G-Mac Transfer.  The crew will have to wait for the Transfer to clear the siding before they can back their train into the station to drop off some empty milk cans.

After dropping empties in Stevenville it’s off to Derwin’s drop.  No backing into milk stations  since it has drive up service!

The train will leave Tidewater at the start of the session and stop at the Freight Station in Chappellton, the milk stations in Kenville and Derwin’s Drop, and the passenger station in Stevenville to pick up full milk cans.  Then it will head to the dairy in Wholinthall.  Toward the end of the session the Milk train will come back and make the same stops dropping off empty milk cans and tie up in Tidewater.

Scott

We had another operating session on the BS&T last evening.  Derwin, Barry, Ewen, Chris, Ken, and Greg made up the crew.

Derwin chose to run the new Milk Train which also got him the CN Interchange and Transfer jobs.  He’s bringing the Transfer out of Bayside in this photo.  The previous guy in the yard had made a bit of a mess and Derwin had a lot of tidying up to do so he was a little late leaving.  Ewen says he’ll pay more attention to track diagrams next time.  I’ll point out something in another photo in this post that we will refer to as the “Incident”.

I’ll have more detail on the Milk Train and The Incident in a coming post.

Barry decided to try solo ops and chose to switch Kenville and Derwin’s Drop since it would be an easier task for a newbie. When I was describing the job to him I said “You’ll be really busy if both wayfreights arrive at the same time.  No need to worry because that rarely ever happens”.  HA!  It happened – twice in the same session!  So I gave him a hand in Derwin’s Drop when the wayfreights arrived.

I think he handled the task quite well.  At the end of the evening he said he had a great time!  He also said something about it’s nice to know that there’s something more to model railroading that building a layout and watching trains go around in circles.

Ewen thought he’d also try a less hectic job that local switching and took the West Bound Wayfreight. After break he became the East Bound #2 for the return to Bayside.  He’s just pulling into Kenville with that train.  I had to put the camera down shortly after this because the West Bound #2 arrived in Derwin’s Drop.

Chris, for some reason, jumped at the chance to switch in Stevenville. He’s watching Derwin bring out the Transfer in the first photo of this post.

Greg ran the East Bound Wayfreight  He is also running the second have of his job as East Bound #2.  We finished exchanging cars and he’s just leaving Derwin’s Drop.

Ken did the local switching in Chappellton, as usual.  He got off to a slow start due to a power glitch (more below) so was behind for most of the first half of the session.

I ran the Coal Peddler and helped out (I hope I was helping!) where needed.

I mentioned a power glitch in Chappellton – the whole industrial district lost power early in the session.  It took a while to track it down to one of the turnouts from the main line into the industrial area.  It decided that it was not going to route power to the whole industrial district.  I didn’t have time to install new feeders (I should have done that years ago – anticipating a turnout failure!) last evening so Ken had to keep the turnout set for the siding.  He also had to watch traffic coming into town in case a train ended up on the poorly maintained industrial tracks.  It made for a hectic evening for him.  Sorry Ken!

Ewen is backing up to connect to the rest of East Bound #2 as he prepares to head for Derwin’s Drop.  You can also see the tail end of the CN Interchange as it heads into Wholinthall.  Wait a minute!  This is the 50′s – why is there no caboose?  I’ll have more details about the “Incident” in a future post.  Stay tuned!

Between fixing a power issue and working in the car shops I’ve got some work to do before the next operating session in two weeks.  I’m going to try to reform my procrastinating ways and get things done in advance.  Hmmm… I hope.

Later!

Scott