kay, so we’re up in Asheville for a model railroad operations weekend, running on a layout that’s modeling… Asheville. Our first run on the weekend (after a marathon crazy ten hour drive to get here) was Wally Brown’s Southern Railroad, Asheville Division.

It’s a tight pike with Ashville dead center and trains coming out to run the main loop correctly using the wye at Old Fort. A lot of fun here, because just about every train enters/exits the line at this location, locals work here, and most of the passenger trains turn here. So it’s busy and requires lots of care and consideration.

To nobody’s surprise, I dispatched and felt pretty good about my performance. John worked the staging yards behind me and got everything out nice and smart. Jim ran a nest of trains and Bob, well, we got more excuses than trains out of Ashville from the yardlette.

The final move of the night involved getting a local freight into the siding at Old Fort and running a passenger train around the wye to get him back to Asheville facing the right direction. This move should have worked – asked the crew how many cars they had to see if they could fit in the shorty siding – yeah, they had four. But I didn’t know they were pulling them with two engines. Next thing I know, a crowd is collecting in the aisle to see if this was going to be a slick move or an egg-on-the-face disaster. Happily, with the slack pushed out and the grab irons greased, we slithered the two trains past each other. The passenger train two-stepped around the wye and then everyone was on their way back to Asheville, smooth move. I was pretty pleased.

Anyway, that was a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to more high-iron action in the sessions to follow tomorrow.

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