hat? Didn’t I just have a session the other night? Yes I did, with friends, as reported HERE. But I had an urge to run (I was managing the tower all last session) and I wanted to run my SW-7 in a little more – it’s so sweet now with a Paragon 4 chip. So I set up the layout and ran after the work session was complete. Hey, I was out there anyway.

Rather than the blow-by-blow I usually do, let me mention a new “scenario” for operations on my Pennsy line. Now, boomers on my line no the first three hours of scheduled freight runs. First, MT-1 comes in with a mixed consist of freight, arriving at 12:30 AM. The next hour, the drill sorts out the consist, getting things in proper order. Then, at 2 AM, TE-1 departs east. On the way out of town, it drops two cars in the outer industrial for the 5 AM local to spot.

The local works the east main while the guys at Lowery Brickworks wonder how they’ll get this new machinery off the flat.

As the train proceeds east and west around the layout, it keeps dropping cars. TE-1 leaves with four. After that, the westbound circuits are two. That goes into Easton and comes back with a car or two. The freights become quite short by the end of the evening.

So for this session, I tried something new – I had two PRR boxcars sitting on the outer industrial. My intention was that these would be “through cars”, simply adding to the length of the train. TE-1 actually swapped the inbounds for them off the outer industrial track. And with its work done, it departed with six cars, rather than four, the through cars lengthening the train and giving it a bit more “oomph”.

This was kinda cool. It would still do its drops and when became time for the locals, well, they were tucked down the branch with the rest of the train, nice and safe and out of the way.

The fun started with the Easton Turn. This little train (now not so little) pulled into Easton with two cars to drop and one to pick up. But suddenly I found myself with two deadheads banging around in my consist. Suddenly Easton became much more interesting with me having to shift them here and there. The inner industrial was too short to work with them and getting the caboose on the other end of them proved to be a pain-in-the-ass (a fun pain, since it was operations). I left Easton smiling, really enjoying that new aspect.

The real fun happened when EM-2 (the PeeDee, which does the final sweep) arrived. Now I had the two deadheads that had to go back on the outer industrial to finish the session. This meant it was mandatory to clean out the outer industrial completely before stuffing those two cars back in. It was just another complexity for the session, a very enjoyable one.

So Tuscarora boomers, for our next session I’m looking forward to maybe giving this a go. I’ll clear it with the Scheduled Operator and make sure he’s up to the challenge. Trust me, it was a lot of fun.

On, and I ran from about 9:30 to 11:00. No coal means a short session. But both are fun!

Photo Credits (from the 3/18 session) Zach B! Great shots!

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Another tank car into Jacobs! Slurp slurp! And it looks like I have a little dusting to do.