02-10-2009, 11:09 PM
My wife went to San Diego for a continuing education seminar (R.N.) that was Tuesday. We just got in. We went down on Monday and stayed at the hotel where the seminar was being held. We went to Balboa Park Monday and went to the some of the museums she was interested in seeing. Today while she was in class, I went to the Model Railroad Museum for the day. In the morning I was talking with some of the members who were operating trains. About 12:30 or so I stepped into the gift shop and picked up a couple of books, and then went to lunch. After lunch I went back to the Museum, and a couple of the guys I had been talking to invited me to come in for a tour and to operate on the layout. I ran a long freight with an a-b-b-b F-7 unit lash up up the hill from Caliente. Then at the top of the hill we took the F-units off the train and put together a shorter train with a Gs-4 in black. I got to take it down the hill to Bakersfield and back up to the siding above Caliente (Alray, I think) before I had to go pick up my wife to head home. What an awesome layout. First time I ever ran a train on a fully signaled railroad with a dispatcher. For anyone who has been to the museum and thought the operators were being rude, I can tell you that even at speeds under 25 scale mph, an operator is very busy running the train even with what is a relatively small crew on a weekday when most of the operators are retired. On weekends when the people with regular jobs are available to operate, the layout may be crowded with trains making the operators even busier! Man, that is one huge layout! I suspect that the aisle is all of 100 yards from Bakersfield to Mojave, and it shortcuts much of the layout!