03-25-2010, 03:30 PM
Galen, at the last few shows we have begun to experiment with car card operating sessions for those that are interested in doing it. There are a bunch of guys in the club who have wanted to do operating sessions, and in fact I think many of them regularly operate on Bill Meyer's layout in his garage. Our operating sessions have been a work in progress. The first time we did it was at the Orange Empire Railway Museum set up during "Thomas Days." One thing we discovered is that there was a lot of "dead time" while dispatchers did their work, or yard masters put trains together. At subsequent op sessions we have dedicated the outside main for run throughs with train length restrictions to allow those doing operations on the inside main to cross over to the outside when needed between trains. That system has worked better since trains are always running on the outside main while the inside main is reserved for those operators taking part in the operating session.
I did mention the requirement to belong to the NMRA as part of our membership requirements, but did not include those dues in the cost since there are different levels of dues depending on whether you have a student membership, regular membership, family membership or opt out of the Scale Rails subscription.
I did mention the requirement to belong to the NMRA as part of our membership requirements, but did not include those dues in the cost since there are different levels of dues depending on whether you have a student membership, regular membership, family membership or opt out of the Scale Rails subscription.