Our 9-hour drive today included a stop at Steamtown in Scranton, and lunch in Newburgh, overlooking the Hudson. We made it to Chelmsford, and are ensconced in a funky-gorgeous BnB. It’s squished between two roads set at a narrow angle, so all the rooms are trapezoidal. Artwork is all over the place.
We’ll be at Al’s at around 10 tomorrow, woo hoo!
I wish good weather all weekend for all you fine people…Happy Railroading, to everyone, and a safe weekend.
Meanwhile, up here in Ottawa, where we used to be blessed with great weather on Saturday mornings; we are threatened with a second Saturday in a row, forcasted to be rain , and boom-booms.
Oh well, the great days of the Annual Invasion of Friends remains forever in our memories, but we still operate EVERY Saturday, if the weather co-operates, and Friends are welcome.
Fred Mills
Here are a few from today’s operations on the RGSNH
the nearing completion Ophir loop area. some terrain is next.
AL P.
The RR is looking awesome Al !
You usually post close ups of certain areas but the overall layout (distance pics) are great!
Was good to finally get to see Al’s amazing work. Hoping the weather holds for tomorrow.
Could we have a backstory on the three railroads and what you TrainOps guys tend to run?
Latest weather show the rain breaking between 10 and 11, and then mostly cloudy until 4ish, so we might get a late start.
First batch of switchlists generated and waiting on crews.
Well, “TrainOps” actually started as operations software that I wrote a bunch of years ago. Then in 2010, I invited a bunch of LSC members to come up here for a weekend and help me finish my RR, and, in return, I fed them and then invited them back a couple months later to operate. That turned into the TrainOps weekend here at my place. Friday was “run what you brung” where people would bring their own trains over for photo runs. Saturday and Sunday were operation sessions. Then several years ago, Stan and I talked and we included his layout on Sunday, and Al joined to show off his RR on Friday. We’ve been doing it ever since (with a couple years off for COVID)
Crowds have been huge (especially when the weather is nice and we are included on the town garden tours), and small. But its great for me to have a hard deadline that the RR has to be in good shape for.
EDIT: Adding a link to the original build-a-rr thread Build-a-RR event
Sounds good. We’ll hang out at the campsite for a bit and show up a little after 10.
Some pictures from today.
Bruce, Linda and Cliff switching at Burke Yard.
Thanks for the pix. Good to see old familiar faces.
Are you casting iron to make the “quick and dirty” signage?
Thanks for posting pics for those of us that couldn’t attend
Yesterday got a late start due to rain, but we got in enough running that everyone was satisfied, though the day was hot and humid after the morning rain. Only one car issue (broken coupler) and one switch throw that needs a bit of work. Possibly two cars have tight trucks as they were troublesome on and off, but all in all the railroad was in fine fettle.
What a total blast! This was the first time Linda and I have done an operating session, so we learned a lot.
Thank you Bruce for being such a great instructor, and thank you Bob and Martha for a wonderful time!
Here’s Bruce’s logging train on the indoor portion of Al’s beautiful layout.
On Bob’s layout, here’s Bruce and Linda bringing our train to its last stop on the switchlist.
Lot of puzzled-looking train operators. How about adding the names for those of us who don’t get out of the house much?
First pic it looks like Bruce on the left then I am guessing Linda then we have Cliff .
Second pic we have Jon.
Stan’s was amazing. Linda and I were handed a pretty challenging uphill run from one the lowest to the highest point of the layout, picking and setting cars along the way. First time using a car-card system, and once we got the hang of it, all made perfect sense.
Here’s a bit of a layout tour.
That’s because it’s indeed a puzzle, Pete, haha! It took a long time yesterday, especially with the second switch list.
Left to right: Bruce, Linda and moi.
Left, Al Pomeroy; right, Jon Radder.
There were more folks there, but I’m afraid I don’t have pics showing them.
