L&N Industrial Rail Spur

[FCIN]

Ed, I'm glad that you kept this tread going. It's one of my favorite threads on ANY forum. Your expertise is invaluable. I'm going to be sad when the layout gets built because of your insight and experience. I can't wait to see how the op session goes.

Appreciate that Mike. I really should close this thread until such time as I finally make up my mind and actually start building the layout, but am always more than happy to share my experience/knowledge/ideas with anyone that's interested.

As for the operating session - it worked out really well and I was a bit surprised in that it actually took longer with two of us operating it. Guess it was due to my sidekick having to spend a bit more time figuring his moves then what I would, but it was fun. However, next time, I'm going to be conductor - I get bored standing there waiting to make the next move - more fun to work the ground!

We first took about 15-20 minutes to go over the new track arrangement and where the car spot locations were - since someone hasn't gotten around to working on the new structure mockups. I had already made up a switch list and had the train blocked out on the spur with one car to place/pull at Industries A, B, D, and E and two for Industry C. All told, it took about an hour and a half to complete the operating session and everything seems to be working out well. We really didn't do any "time killing" other than just operating at prototype speeds, waiting a few seconds between moves and then of course the time involved when the conductor had to stop and think things out: "Let's see, I need to pull that car, spot this one behind that one, and re-spot these two". That sort of thing. Just as on the prototype, you can sure spend a lot of time just working one industry!

For now, I don't see anything that needs to be changed, but will do a few more test sessions to see how I like it. I just hope I can get the look that I want for the layout and can keep myself from that urge to try and come up with something else! Seems to always be that thought in the back of the mind that there is something that I haven't thought of or seen that might be just a bit more interesting! Just too darn many good ideas and prototypes to chose from! Not to mention the outstanding modeling you see on Big Blue.

There is of course the big danger that I've encountered so many times in the past and that is once you can actually operate the layout, I don't seem to get anything else done. I come downstairs with the intention of working on a structure or something and the next thing I know, I'm just operating the layout and that structure is still just a pile of parts or sheets of styrene!