Coming up in the June issue is a fantastic article about operations that Nancy Norris and Stan Ames have been working on for a long while. They just posted an online version of it.
http://grw.trains.com/gardening-library/beginners/2018/04/greening-your-railway
Some of you TrainOps regulars are even in some pictures.
I’ll have to get Stan’s autograph…(https://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-wink.gif)
Stan requested permission to use photos a while back. found myself at Big Rock working with Jon Radder from last years trainops session. Going to take some time to go thru and read all the info presented.
a must read for anyone into operations.
AL P.
Al Pomeroy said:
Stan requested permission to use photos a while back. found myself at Big Rock working with Jon Radder from last years trainops session. Going to take some time to go thru and read all the info presented.
a must read for anyone into operations.
AL P.
That picture is a typical session at Big Rock. “What the hell do we do here?”
Based on what I’ve seen over the last eight years at our little rural county seat farm burg club this thing about model railroaders being interested in operations, operating sessions, is one hundred percent fake news, a fabrication, a myth, a fantasy, an unreality created purely for marketing purposes.
(for instance, for our 20 foot square modular HO layout I built a 16 foot straight set of modules with a passing siding, a run around track, and eleven places to spot cars at industries: the number of club operating sessions, zero)
Bob McCown said:
Al Pomeroy said:
Stan requested permission to use photos a while back. found myself at Big Rock working with Jon Radder from last years trainops session. Going to take some time to go thru and read all the info presented.
a must read for anyone into operations.
AL P.
That picture is a typical session at Big Rock. “What the hell do we do here?”
“And how the hell do we do it?”
Operations…who ever thought…never heard of such a thing…this is news…an article in GR, on LS operations…after years of refusing to print such an article…wonders never cease… I must read up on such an idea…
Fr.Fred
Fred Mills. said:
Operations…who ever thought…never heard of such a thing…this is news…an article in GR, on LS operations…after years of refusing to print such an article…wonders never cease… I must read up on such an idea…
Fr.Fred
You should try it sometime, Fred. Much better than just running your trains around the patio. Maybe you can get some friends to come over and help, too! 
Bob, Thanks for posting this. I really enjoyed reading through this and how they accomplish it.
Years ago… OK, decades ago when I was member of an HO club in Elmhurst, IL we tried operating sessions too and it was a hit. We never lacked members wanting to join an operating session. Working Sessions, not that was another story…
I did see one pic from 2012 good day RCS of new england and Train Li were there and some trading tables may have been more dealers there just don’t remember.
And I didn’t think you could get to big rock from there.
Richard
Ken Brunt said:
I’ll have to get Stan’s autograph…(https://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-wink.gif)
Yeah …maybe he will sign the other side of my ass. Then I will have Bruce on one side and Stan on the other.
It finally happened, Marc ran out of anything else to publish (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-surprised.gif)(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-tongue-out.gif)
Thanks for the positive comments.
Credit goes to Nancy Norris for this article. While operations is very positive on this site it is alas not of much interest to a large segment of Large Scale community and has apparently been very unpopular to the readers of Garden Railways. We are members of two local clubs and only a few in one club and almost none in the other are at all interested in operations preferring to instead to just run their trains in circles
I believe that part of the reason for this is that most operation articles are written for those that already are into operations and most LS users do not understand the fun aspects.
Nancy approached this project differently. She approached it from the social aspect. In our case and I suspect the case for a large number of other Large Scale operators the social aspect of an ops session plays a large part of our enjoyment.
Nancy has only a few pages for her article in each issue so for this topic she decided to keep the part in the magazine at a high level with the vast majority of material published on the Garden Railways website which in itself is rather unique for Garden Railways.
I for one hope her approach is successful and becomes a model for future topics.
Stan Ames
SJR&P Operations
The article itself is great… The icing on the cake is at the bottom with all the picture links to explain different aspects… (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-cool.gif)
I think this may be a welcome article, I for one am building my RR with at least a leaning toward some ability to do operations type work, just going in circles is ok for display , but when I am playing by myself I want to be able to do “work“. I look forward to reading all the article. Hopefully I am not making too many big mistakes.
I was sort of invited to an ops session on an HO railroad one time. The person who invited me thought more about it and decided to ask the owner of the railroad if it would be ok to bring me along. He never got back to me with an answer, nor directions to the guy’s house, so I didn’t go. I think it would be interesting to see what goes on during a session.
If you don’t mind a 5 hour road trip, stop on by this weekend…(https://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-wink.gif)
Hey David,
It would be great to see you at Ken’s! You’ll be an old pro by the end of the weekend.
It’s definitely worth the 5 hour trip even if all you do is hang out and watch, but I don’t think you will be able to resist the call of the throttle.
Ken Brunt said:
If you don’t mind a 5 hour road trip, stop on by this weekend…(https://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-wink.gif)
5 hours to Pittsburgh from your place? I suspect that’s only if you stop at every light?
