Yesterday my sister-in-law and her daughter, my 11 going on 12yo niece stopped by. I had just finished repairing some rocks in Deep Cut that had pushed into the clearance over the winter. Niece said she wanted to come over some day when I was running trains. I replied that I had a train ready to go and needed to test to be sure the repairs were good.

She has used my 2-stick controller before and just needed a 30 second refresher. We left the Indoor division with 2 45-Ton diesels pulling a short train of two box cars and a caboose. She handled the train like the experienced engineer that she is. Most of her experience is on Bob’s layout on free-run days before TrainOps. We made three trips around the Wye before returning to the indoor division. The run was not without incident, but all were fault of track needing spring maintenance.

When we got back inside I had her switch out a few cars to put them back where they belonged. When we were done she mentioned that the switching was the most fun. I asked if she would like to come by when I run an operating session and got a resounding SURE!!!

This could be a fun summer

Great to here John, Glad to here you have another kid to play with.(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-cool.gif)

Ron, are you saying the John is a kid?

I had my 7 YO grandson bugging me to run them when they were out here from Oregon. Didn’t get into the ops part of it, but just watching his eyes light up and the ear-to-ear smile while he ran them was fun.

Great to have a buddy to run with…(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-wink.gif)

This is great and what seven year old kid wouldn’t like your RR? There are a lot of practical skills to be learned from model railroading. My daughter just got married so I better get to work. Thanks for sharing!

Very cool John!

I have an operating buddy too but he’s getting pretty old so I’ve be looking for an apprentice to replace him when the time comes. I could also go down to Kens and go roundy round now but he’s getting REALLY old so I better get there soon!

Roos - (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-surprised.gif)

True test will be after we’re done with the first train - if she wants to run a second or quit. Even on my small RR, working alone it takes me nearly two hours to do a set-out train, one train with orders and then a sweep train. A second order train would add about a half hour.

David Maynard said:

Ron, are you saying the John is a kid?

Only in his hart.(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-cool.gif)

Ron, oh ok. Me, I am just enjoying my second childhood too much, and I refuse to grow up! Grown ups are grumpy people, who are always worried about something. And the things they worry about usually don’t happen. And if they do actually happen, they aren’t as bad as the “grown up” imagined that they would be.

David A. Maynard, pretending to be a grown up since 1988, but only during working hours.

I mentioned in another post, my granddaughter, her mom and my wife came with me to layout tour, my granddaughter( Abbe, age 11) brought her tablet to take pics since her younger brother was sick, she took a ton of pictures and would come get me to show me something and kept coming to me telling me WE have to do this and this in my yard when WE build it. So I think I may have something that will come close to rivaling her massive obsession with dogs. Like you said Dave , I may be getting old, but I reuse to grow up!!! Now that I may have one or more grandkids interested in playing with trains, it will be even more fun.