Whew!

Six op sessions in 15 days. With MinnRail 2023 now behind us and I’ve had a chance to rest, here’s a recap of recent activities.

Cars spotted along The Embarcadero as the crew works the spur for Fibreboard.

Here’s what the completed work along The Embarcadero looks like. Nine pier tracks, each holding a couple of cars (well short of the dozen or more that the prototype could hold, but I can live with that). Some are facing point and some trailing point, so the crews have to think a bit and plan ahead. I managed to find a couple of boxes of vehicles from the previous layout, so the street isn’t completely devoid of traffic, although it’s still pretty sparse.

I ran several op sessions last spring, for the first time in quite some time (years!), just to get back into the swing of things. And then in preparation for my MinnRail sessions, I invited six local operators who hadn’t been here yet (and therefore don’t know what I’ve done or what tricks one might use to keep moving) to three different sessions. Each of those went fairly well, with only a couple of turnout motors not behaving properly for us. Those got fixed, and then three crews from out of town came over this past weekend for the “official” sessions (the Seniority Roster has been updated accordingly). Those three sessions were all but flawless — just a couple of derailments that couldn’t be explained to human error. Everything else was smooth sailing.