Tuesday night at the Huff and Puff

The railroad was a busy place with visitors watching as crews worked through traffic jams. We may need a dispatcher to sort things out, or at least use the train orders. I think we could have each freight do most of its switching in one town and only switch a couple of other towns. An example would be an oil train switching Springbank and Herons Landing with one pickup at Valleyview.  Another idea would be to have Lincoln switched by west bound freights only as most of the turnouts favour west bound traffic, the Miller interchange could be switched by east bound freights. I also think Wellington should be switched with the other towns. Next Tuesday is work night, 2 turnouts to be put in and lots of wiring to install the new Quad unit.

busy switching

Glen and Donald talk trains

Bill pulls the coal train

Tuesday night at the Huff and Puff.

Happy to see Jim Long back after his long vacation, it took him a while to take in all the changes. Then he jumped right in with Glen to run a freight from Wellington. Trent was the yard master again, it was a hectic night. I guess baseball will be keeping him away for a while. We still have to start using the train order cards so all the different trains get run. As the Miller interchange yard was full, Don and Tom run the branch line freight. Hey, all the new track at Northdale performed well, but the wye has moved and will need to be adjusted. Jim spent most of the night pondering how to set up the new blocks when the new quad unit is installed. Operators are getting the hang of using the card system and running in pairs is helping out a lot. Bill and I ran together and I was intrigued the different ways we would approach the same switching job. I think it would be beneficial to make sure we run with different crews, learning from each other as we go. Each person should also be the yard master as this is where all the trains and cards are setup. A very sad note, Rick informed us that Don Stoddart's Grandson  passed away suddenly. Our prayers and thoughts are with his family at this sad time.

Cliff waits to start his run

Did we miss that pickup?

I was told this was an important meeting?

Trent had to take a break, tough day as yard master

Don and Tom rn on the branch.

Tuesday night at the Huff and Puff

The monthly work night. The club bought 2 turnouts and a few bright boys. Members cleaned track, repaired a few dips in the roadbed, soldered on more feeders, fixing all of the blue pin areas. The new trackwork at Northdale was also wired. At the meeting we decided freight trains should be run with an engineer and a brakeman.  The engineer will check all on coming turnouts, assist in switching, and run the train. The brakeman will carry the car cards, assist in switching, and return turnouts to the mainline as the train leaves.  Any new rolling stock will be checked to standards before being put on the layout. To this end some repair supplies we donated for the club rolling stock repairs.  We would also like to have all steel wheels on our rolling stock at sometime in the future. Extending station platforms to the second mainline was also talked about. Thanks for the Timbits Cliff.

track cleaners

more creative minds at work

another work group