Model railroads are like their real-world counterparts; they can suffer downturns in traffic and business.

Last night, our club ops were sparsely attended. Where sometimes we’ll have 20+, maybe upwards of thirty people, this time we only had a dozen. Member’s wives where in recovery, people had to work their crummy recession-desperate jobs, it was summer, something was on the tube, whatever. As a friend told me when he drove in and saw the cars in the parking lot, he thought “Uh oh.”

But the layout was clean and we were here and trains were coupled up, so we figured we’d run. And actually, a lot of the crews did double duties, pulling cuts onto staging, laying over to another train, making a second run. All told, we ran all the scheduled trains (except one passenger train, JW’s forlorned tootsie roll). The passenger moves ran on the dot, the freights checked through Martin Yard like a hotel lobby, nobody crashed (your secret is safe with me, Bob) and everyone had a lot of fun.

We made it work – thanks for the fun session, guys!