For those of you that are unfamiliar with the TrainOps program, here’s a shot of a switch list generated by the program. It was developed by our illustrious leader, Bob McCown with a lot of help and input from Bruce Chandler. It’s still in the Beta testing stages till we get the bugs out but I think Bob has eliminated most of them. It’s mainly intended for smaller operations such as short lines and branch lines with 1 or 2 operators, though we did have as many as 4 when we were using it at Bobs recently.
Just to familiarize everyone with how Hesperus is laid out, this is a bird’s eye view identifying the industies served.
And here’s our switch list:
We have 4 pick ups from the LCL track and 1 pick up from Chandlers. Also one boxcar to spot at the LCL and one boxcar to spot at Goldings.
We only have room for one car and the engine on the lead to Goldings so we’ll grab our flat car from Chndlers first.
Next we have to spot D&RGW 32506 at Goldings. It’s on the front end of our train. After we get that done we can pick up the 4 cars going with us from the LCL track at the Depot.
The car we need to leave for the LCL is on the back of the train so we’ll have to pull up and back that down to the Depot.
Finishing our work here we check the switch list for our next assignment. Looks like the lumber company.
We have one gon to pick so that should be easy since its on the passing siding.
We’ll pull the loco past the switch then back down and couple up.
Then it’s on to Burns Jct where we drop off our consist at the Interchange.
The track up to the Interchange is a 3% grade so we can only move 3 cars at a time.
On the last move I cheated and backed the caboose up with me since it looked like rain and figgered I better hurry…
Normally I would take the caboose back to the yard in Delores and end the session. All in all in was a good time and took about 2 hours. Not a bad way to spend a fall afternoon.