irst thing: This will be the first of four ops sessions I’ll be attending this week. So get ready for my reports.

I’ve not run my little crazy layout since January – three months. Just been busy with scenery on it, other things, life in general, you know.

The big thing was my primary switcher, that Broadway Limited SW-7, had taken a dump. To reset it required something akin to a mix of safe-cracking and bomb-disposal: had to get the shell off (a major achievement) and then hold a button down while putting its trucks on a live layout. I managed to pull it off and wanted to see if I could hold a safe and sane session with the little guy.

Went over to the club – John DeVasto was there doing his thing so we chatted while I failed and failed to boot up the layout. All sorts of grief until I remembered how to boot it with the auxiliary panel installed (hint – all the turnouts need to be pulled forward in the tower and the fault lever deactivated). So after 20 minutes of that, I was able to roll.

All this for a private session on my 2×4. Sheesh.

Anyway, the session went smooth. I loaded it up with extra cars so the Scheduled Engineer (me) had maximum switching puzzles on his plate. And I really had a nice time, just switching my way through the jobs. Of course, I really missed having someone sitting in the coal chair when I needed to switch around the bridge area (and the mountains don’t help). But everything worked fine. I even put the bobber caboose into service and had a great time with it.

In fact, everything went well until the end. After the PeeDee was complete, I realized that a box car on the very end (just forward of the crummy, almost in the tunnel) should have gone on the siding at the team track. AND the box car on the end of the team track siding, that had to go onto the branch line cut. They were accidentally in the wrong locations and needed to both be swapped. Total pain in the ass (and pointless, since I was about to pick up everything anyway) but I went ahead and did it. Didn’t blow at the crossing anymore – let the motorists fend for themselves.

But if was fun to just doodle away a couple of hours at the club, switching.

Now, on to the WAZU tomorrow!

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