t took me ninety minutes to get to the club on my drive out. My adventure involved a missing man, a roadside emergency, a diversion to pick up a member, a missing key, a missing dinner, a found key, and then 6pm Colonial Drive traffic.

And then there was the layout failing to come up inexplicably, of Kyle and myself rushing about as people checked engines, and finally a solution (sorta) that we are not sure about.

And THEN, when we finally got to run, my Pennsy F’s which had run so nice on Monday’s test ran faulted and sputtered all through the Shelfton job. And there were a lot of cars coming back with me, so getting turned around in limited space was a real trick. Another two cars and I would have hit the Pez end-of-track. And then, while positioned at the top of the Shelfton Spur, twice the engines crept out onto the main.

So I learned two things.

First, please don’t lose your cool at the club. Yes, it can be difficult and people can be bothersome. And N-Scale, by virtue of size, digitization and miniaturization, can be frustrating. But a couple of members lost their temper and snapped at others. We had guests. Please don’t. Even frazzled and starving, I didn’t. And you shouldn’t. Enough said.

Second, okay, I’m going to suggest that anyone with a two-knob throttle set their address to their prefix and “00”. Look, you can recall your former address with a simple series of keystrokes. But I was guilty of drift and while we were trying to debug the line, I found two engines drifted over turnouts. These damn throttles should have a lock-down button but they do not. I set the emergency brake on my car, and now I’m going to start locking down my throttle. It’s that or bring down a section of the layout or melt a truck. So if you don’t know how to do this, let me know and I’ll show you. Easy.

So it was a busy night – looked a bit light at the start but then people came and we ran. The guests (I hope) were impressed – I didn’t really get a chance to talk to anyone. I ran 902 (Shelfton) and X4263 (the MOW) and then 271. The MOW was a breeze, easiest seniority point I’ve ever made. Just a run up from the pocket to Harris, let it sit for four hours while I went back to sputtering and sparking in Shelfton, then return and run around and back down the hill to the embrace of the interlocking. I had a lot of fun.

I’ve been told that a number of people did runs showing improvement. John L finally got the dust off his passenger train and ran Ohio Flyer 2. TV ran a furnace (I wanted to do this too but ran out of time). Frank C showed remarkable improvement with 95. I think Jeff C and John DV has a saw-by at Harris – nobody came screaming or crying to me so I guess it went well. Luke L learned the yard (and slipped in TPEX as well). John C moved more minerals in one go than a glacier in the Rockies – he combined the ore and limestone trains together into a super-long death train, which he managed like an Indian mahout (look it up). Zach and Terry did a great job dispatching – I didn’t see any massive delays and all my calls were answered quickly (nor did I need to take a number for the eastern DS). There was a bit of a tangle in the early session, about 6am, at Red Rock but management worked through it. The yards ran well. And if I didn’t mention your name above, that is also praise – if you run a train across this crazy division and I don’t notice you, well, it’s like being a ninja – if you aren’t noticed, it’s a good thing.

Missed Alex and Kaden – they were steady hands at this and their absence was felt.

I’ll say that later, I asked Zack (normally Mr. Gloomy in the postmortems) and he actually thought the session went down well. I’d have to agree, even though I was heads down for most of it and didn’t pay attention. So good for the club in clearing the line.

A couple of us went over to Ale house afterwards where I finally got dinner. I was so hungry. But when my burger came, the waitress blanched – there was a hair on it. She was going to rush it back and I told her not to bother (John C plucked it off. What’s worse: a hair on your burger or John handling it?) (Joking). Anyway, I told her I’d traveled across Indian and lived in the Philippines for two years. Had worse. I could tell she was relieved that I didn’t fuss over it – no I didn’t – I was too busy eating it.

And she comped it, which was nice of her.

So anyway, even with that horrible start to the session, it was really a lot of fun. Thanks for the effort, guys!

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