I had lots of time to prepare for this session, so all locos had clean wheels and bad order reports from the last session were cleared up. The extra preparation resulted in a relatively smooth-running session. So much so we were done in record time!

Bruce Bell and his son popped in during the session so we spent some time talking with him. His son even got to run the return train from Tidewater to Wholeinthall. Bruce better get his layout running soon or he’ll have a revolt on his hands.

Between Bruce’s visit, doing the local switching in Kenville, and providing helper service up and down “The Ridge”, I didn’t get much time to take pictures, but here are a few I managed to take toward the end of the evening.

Greg running the local job in Derwin’s Drop.

Derwin gets the helper ready for the Transfer to Bayside.
The Transfer is almost at the top of “The Ridge”.

The transfer heads through Stevenville.
Brian eases the Transfer into Bayside.

Mark decided he’d give the Stevenville Local Job a try for this session. He picked a good time to try it since it turned out to be the busiest job on the layout. Ha!

Ken took up his usual position in Chappellton. As luck would have it Chappellton turned out to be fairly calm with only half the usual car movements in and out.

Greg ran the West Bound Wayfreight, and the Local Job in Derwin’s Drop. Derwin also did double duty in Tidewater and the East Bound Wayfreight, with a helper job mixed in. He as fairly well behaved during the evening, gaining very few demerit points, for a change.

That’s pretty much it for this session. It was a fun evening. Thanks guys!

Scott

Well, we were short one expected operator, but with 5 it was more than we’ve had on the BS&T in many months.

As usual, jobs were picked on a first come/first pick basis. Mark – the newbie and first to arrive – chose to run the Thumper, the west wayfreight from Tidewater to Bayside. Greg decided to keep his usual job as the local switching in Stevenville/Derwin’s Drop. Ken followed suit and chose the local job in Chappellton. Derwin and Brian arrived at the same time. Derwin chose the Rambler, east wayfreight from Bayside to Tidewater, and Brian ended up with the Wholeinthall and Transfer Turns. I decided to give Ken a hand since he had a lot of work ahead of him by taking the local job in Kenville.

The Rambler arrives in Stevenville. Here it will leave cars for the local to deliver and pick up freight heading west.

For some reason Derwin decided to leave the Stevenville cut on the service track. Unfortunately, the service track wasn’t built for freight cars and the fueling rack was damaged.

Brian has already run the Wholinthall west into Tidewater and is now busy making up the transfer from Bayside to Tidewater. The transfer will carry freight destined for Wholinthall so it needs to get to Tidewater before the Wholinthall turn departs.

Derwin had his share of trouble during the op session. He continued his bad luck into Derwin’s Drop. Apparently he overlooked checking turnouts ahead of him while he studied his setout instructions. He very nearly ran his train into a string of cars sitting at the coal mine!

Ken is busy sorting out his orders in Chappellton. He got the short end of the stick this evening. His pickups and drop offs were easily twice as much work as the Stevenville orders. Good thing I took up the slack in Kenville.

The West Bound Transfer is rolling through Derwin’s Drop where it must take on a braking helper. The local switcher is picking up that duty since the helper from Kenville is missing an operator (he’s busy railfanning).

The braking helper is required so the large freights don’t pick up too much speed going down the grade at The Ridge. It can be quite tricky taking up some of the slack but so so much that the train is “stretched”.

The helper (right) is cut off near the bottom of the grade and returns to Derwin’s Drop.

(left) The West Bound Transfer arrives in Tidewater. Now Brian can start breaking it up so he can build the return train to Wholinthall. (right) Power from the Rambler sits in Tidewater waiting for the service facility to be freed up.

Mark drops off a cut of cars for the Stenville Local to put away. We discovered that the Rambler’s luck continued beyond the run into the Mine. He apparently picked up an east bound car from Derwin’s Drop and took it all the way to Tidewater. It was put on the first train departing Tidewater and delivered to Stevenville, late.

The Wholeinthall Turn is making the run home as it heads into Wholeinthall Tunnel. It’s work day is almost done.

The East Bound Transfer needs help getting over The Ridge. Rather than taking the assigned helper the Kenville local hops in front of the lead loco and provides just enough power to get the train up the hill .

All in all it was a very enjoyable operating session. Next week we’ll be operating on Derwin’s Canadisle Rail.

Later!

Scott

I guess it’s time to get back into the swing of things. Summer is not over, but I really need to get back into this on-line stuff. It’s been stagnant way too long!

I haven’t done anything new to the layout all summer. At least until this past weekend. I’ve had a PSFour from Tony’s for almost a year. I finally got around to installing it yesterday (sorry no pics of it yet). So far I only have two zones set up, Tidewater Yard, and the rest of the layout. Eventually there will be four zones: Bayside, Stevenville/Derwin’s Drop, Kenville/Chappellton, and Tidewater. The guys noticed a big difference last evening even with only two zones. The biggest difference was not having to press the reset button after a short.

The reason I finally installed the PSFour? UMG’s annual RailFest weekend is this weekend coming and we needed a circuit breaker. So I had to install in on my layout to make sure I knew it worked. And it did, flawlessly, right out of the box.

This year’s RailFest is called “MudFest, since it is being held in the mud capital of eastern Canada – Maitland N.S. We’ve rented a school gymnasium to set up our Free-Mo Style modules and operate the layout all weekend. It should be a blast!

You can see what the layout should look like, provided all the modules show up. There will probably be a module or two constructed at the last minute due to no-shows.

Anyway, back to last evening’s operating session. Summer operations are usually quite a bit different from winter operations in that fewer people attend. There’s usually two or three that have other things come up and one that takes the summer off completely. So, I have created scenarios for operations on the BS&T based on the number of operators on hand. For example if there are only two operators everything is switched by Wayfreights – TuB Rambler (East Bound) and Backwater Crawler (West Bound) and I run the staging train (Wholeinthal Turn) and the Transfer Turn. If there are three operators the third guy runs the two turns and I spend more time helping in yards or with helper service on Devil’s Ridge.

Derwin ran the Wholeinthal Turn last night. Here he is running past Chappellton shortly after departing Wholeinthal. Eventually you won’t be able to see the train running through this area because of buildings and other view breaks in front of the tracks.

Once he arrives in Tidewater he’ll hop in the company van and head to Bayside where he’ll make up the Transfer and run it into Tidewater. Back in Tidewater he’ll have to make up both return trains and run them out to their destinations. He’ll be a busy guy!

(Actually I helped him out a bit and did some sorting and made up part of his trains for him while he was out on the road)

Shawn is one of our summertime regulars. He’s operated with us the past few summers while he is on break from teaching in some exotic places around the world (like Taiwan, the Philippines, and Togo). Here he is getting the TuB Rambler ready for the trip to Bayside. It’s a fairly small train (5 cars) leaving Tidewater, but by the time it gets to Devil’s Ridge it’ll require a helper engine to make the grade up to Derwin’s Drop. He’s got a lot of work ahead of him since he has to pull all the east bound cars in the four towns along the way and put away cars that he has in his train for those towns as well.

Well, the way the evening progressed the Tub Rambler didn’t make it past Stevenville. Here it is parked on the Stevenville work siding. It’ll give me something to do while I wait for the next BS&T operating session in 3 weeks

Unfortunately, I got too busy myself to take many pictures so I don’t have any shots of Greg running the Backwater Crawler. He did make it all the way from Bayside to Tidewater though.

All in all I think it was a great evening for us. I certainly had fun!

Anyway, I’ll post a little something next week about our “MudFest” in Maitland N.S. this weekend. I’ll try to take lots of pictures!

Scott

Last Sunday evening marked the 1st anniversary of operations on the BS&T. The week previous was a mad rush to get things back together and cleaned up from two months of scenery and rearrangement work. Add to that figuring out how operations would work with the addition of the new staging area.

First of all I must apologize for not getting any pictures from the evening. Between trying to figure out the operating scheme, helping the operators figure out the operating scheme, and running a train once in a while, I didn’t have much time to take pictures.

So, here’s the train/job line-up:

Bayside Yard
Tidewater Yard
Stevenville Local
Chappellton Local
Kenville Local
Derwin’s Drop Local
Hotshot Freight (turn)
East/West Transfer (turn)
East Wayfreight
West Wayfreight

Things went fairly well, overall. There were a few track issues. Not all the ballast was cleaned up through some turnouts which caused a few problems until it was cleaned out. The over-center springs on some turnouts are a little weak. I will be adding proper ground throws to most turnouts over the next little while (as of last evening, all the turnouts in Chappellton have ground throws).

Early on in the session the Chappellton switcher developed some mechanical difficulties and a replacement loco was called in from Kenville. The repair crew had a look at it on Monday, fixed the problem, and moved the replacement back to Kenville.

The operating scheme must change to reduce the minimum number of operators required. Actually, I think I’ll have a couple scenarios I can use depending on the number of operators that show up. I’ve got it down to as few as 4 people (4 very busy people), or as many as 8 (16 with brakemen).

Anyway, at the post-session review the guys said they had a great time. The things they said they would change were mostly related to turnouts that the ground throws should fix.

So, until next time!

Scott

We’re almost caught up to present day. These photos are from an operating session held over the past summer. The crew is pretty slim in the summer and guest operators help to round things out.

Derwin tries to keep up with things in Tidewater
as Shawn makes his way to Chappellton.

Greg checks out yard operations. Shawn works
in Chappellton.

Shawn’s very busy at the far end of
Chappellton. Derwin’s trying not to break
anything.

A closer look at Chappellton.

Next time – the guys are itchy to get a start on scenery!

Later!