Finally, after several years of visiting layouts in Saint John for operating sessions and inviting them to to come here to return the favour they took us up on our offer. On April 20th Steve, Lou, Bob H. and Bob K. made the trek across the Confederation Bridge (a first for Lou) for a fun day of operating on P.E.I.

As is the case with most operating visits we started the day at Derwin’s on Canadisle Rail.  The guys were very impressed with how much operating can be included in a smallish layout.  Derwin’s layout is about 20′ x 12′ but there is enough work to keep 5 operators busy for hours.

After lunch and another shift of operating on the Canadisle Rail we headed over to the Bayside & Tidewater.  After a brief tour and explanation of the operation the guys picked jobs and the session got underway.

Lou chose the Stevenville local switch job.  It was one of the busiest sessions for Stevenville in quite a while so Lou had his hands full.

Steve chose one of the wayfreight jobs.  The nice thing about wayfreights is that the operator gets to travel the whole railroad and has a nice mix of running and switching.

Derwin ran the interchange trains, as usual, and Ewen was the Bayside Yardmaster.

The two Bob’s are both in Chappellton right now.  Bob K. is the local crew in Chappellton and Bob H. is running the other wayfreight.

Chris pulled double duty as Tidewater Yard Master and running the Mine train.

We have been having a few challenges with WiThrottle since adding virtual signal panels in Stevenville.  (More about the virtual signals in a future post) Paul Bender suggested that it might be due to a flaky router.  The old Dlink was replaced by a new Western Digital router and it seemed to have resolved the issue since we had no WiThrottle problems at all during the 3 hour operating session.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here.  I may post more frequently, but it is hard to find the time. A few of us drove to Halifax yesterday to operate on a couple layouts there.  We operated on the Fall River Eastern Railroad and the White River Southern and had a visit to Nottingham Subdivision.  All are very nice layouts and we had a great time.  Here are some photos from our day….

Reviewing the comments from the Black River Road post with this photo in mind, I see that someone didn’t take his own advice. This photo shows what can happen when a load is just a little too tall. I won’t say who is responsible, but he’s pretty tall as well. Ha!

Fortunately for him he is not responsible for replacing the equipment or repairs to Chappellton Station.  It’s a good thing the roof supports were strong enough that the street above didn’t cave in!

Thanks for the photo, Greg!

Scott