Operating session - 10th February 2017

I called the crew together last Friday, for a night of train running. It was a big night, with nine guest operators attending.

In the days leading up to the session I made some changes to the operating timetable, as foreshadowed in my previous post.  The main change was to replace the Gainesville/Ardmore local freight with two separate trains:

(i) an Ardmore local freight that switches the towns between Ardmore and Dougherty, and

(ii) an extra that runs between Purcell, Ok and Gainesville, Tx (actually, north staging to south staging) switching the quarries at Dougherty and Big Canyon.

I also changed the way we operate the Lindsay and Ringling mixed locals, and the SLSF train that operates between Ardmore and Hugo, Ok. In the past these trains were run by the yard operators, in theory at least. In reality, the yard operators were usually too busy with other duties to run these trains.  So I added them to the operating sequence so they can be run by the general pool of operators.

Here's the crew call board for the trains that we ran on the night:

The fast-clock was set at 5:1 ratio, which meant that the session would (or *should*) last just under 1 hour and 50 mins provided there were no unexpected delays.

Shortly after the trains started running we encountered the first problem for the night: I had inadvertently started the fast-clock at 3:00AM instead of 6:00AM.  Du-Oh!

Greg volunteered to run the Ardmore yard. Here he is helping Barry to organise the Ardmore local freight. In the background, Dennis (on the left) and Peter (center) are getting ready to run Trains 38 and 6 respectively. Darren (right) is getting ready to run the SLSF freight from Hugo (staging).

At the other end of the layout, John C was again operating the Pauls Valley yard. Here he is with Graham who is running Train 37, a south-bound fast freight.

Bill is gathering up cars at Davis, for the Pauls Valley local freight. Noel (background) will soon be running the south-bound gravel train, and here he is checking to see what work has to be done at Dougherty.

John C watches while Graham brings Train 37 into Pauls Valley on the arrival track.

Meanwhile, over at Davis Bill is almost done building the Pauls Valley local....

Back at Ardmore, Darren has arrived with the SLSF freight train from Hugo, and is sorting the paperwork. Peter is bringing Train 6, the north-bound "Ranger", into town on the passenger track, while Dennis and Barry watch.

Barry is switching Gene Autry with the Ardmore local. As an aside, I'm planning to relay the track in this photo in order to increase the siding capacity at the Ardmore Air Base (where the cars are sitting in the far corner.)

The Pauls Valley local (bottom left-hand corner of the photo) is waiting for Train 6 to leave Wynnewood so it can commence switching.

South-bound fast freight #37 cruises through Dougherty en-route to Texas:

Darren spent the evening assisting the yard operators, and in particular, running the trio of local trains that I previously called upon the yard operators to run.  These trains all have a short run, but collectively they move about 15 to 18 cars per session to offline locations other than the main (north and south) staging yards. 

Here, Darren is bringing the Ringling mixed local into Ardmore on the arrival track. Once he's there he will run the locos around the train, cut off the combine, and move it to a stub-siding adjacent to the depot so the passengers can alight in safety.

Dennis watches on while Bill does some switching at Wynnewood with the Pauls Valley local.

When I changed the way the quarries are switched I suspected that the new 'gravel train' would arrive at Dougherty at around the same time that the Ardmore local would be there, but I thought (hoped, really) that the three sidings would have sufficient capacity to handle both trains at once.  Unfortunately, that wasn't to be. Barry had no problems with the Ardmore local, but Noel struggled with the gravel train (although he didn't have to use the 5-finger switcher!)  Before the next session I will have to give some thought to resolving that problem, particularly since I want to add another 8 to 12 cars to the gravel cycle.

Graham and Greg are doing the paperwork after switching Train 37 at Ardmore.

Bill has finished the switching at  Wynnewood and is preparing to leave for Pauls Valley

Train 40, with Dennis at the controls, has arrived at Ardmore.

Noel, with the gravel train, is collecting loads at the Dolese Bros. quarry at Big Canyon.

The Ardmore local followed the gravel train through Big Canyon. Barry had to collect a covered hopper loaded with sand.

At Pauls Valley, John and Dennis are discussing shipments for north-bound Train 38, while Darren switches cars at the local industries. Bill is back at Wynnewood, switching cars with the south-bound Pauls Valley local (which is returning to Davis.)

Due to miscommunication, the stop for "beans" came a little later than I intended. Here the guys are making short work of supper.

For some strange reason, late running Train 38 ended up on the house track behind the Pauls Valley depot. Here, it is leaving Pauls Valley immediately ahead of Train 12 - the north-bound Texas Chief.  And are they tank cars immediately behind the loco? Someone will have some 'splaining to do :-)

I'm not sure what's happening here, but my guess is that Greg is pushing the caboose from the Ardmore local onto the caboose storage track.

John's shift at Pauls Valley is almost done, and he'll be leaving a very neat yard for whoever runs it next time.  (That will probably be him. LOL)

I am very happy with the way the session went. Before we started I asked the guys to focus on a number of things that were tend to do badly, and they did do those things really well. Thanks guys - I greatly appreciate the effort you made to run the layout the way I intend it to be run. 

Thanks for reading,

Ron

Quarry operations

A few weeks ago I was saddened to learn that my Okie friend Roy "Rip Rap" Miller had passed away. Roy worked at the Dolese Bros. quarry at Big Canyon between 1950 and 1963, and over the past 15 years or so generously provided me with a lot of information about his time at the quarry, along with a bunch of photographs (that can be found on Dwane Stevens' flickr site here.)

Way back in 2003 Roy wrote to me: 
"At the time I worked at Big Canyon, there was a local train which ran from Gainesville, Texas to Purcell Oklahoma, and one from Purcell to Gainesville every day. Which ever one arrived in Dougherty first usually switched out our loads and set in empties somewhere around noon each day. The Santa Fe also ran a night switcher which came sometimes from Gainesville and sometimes from Purcell to switch us at night. The cars were dropped in Dougherty where they were billed to destination and shipped from there. We gave the billing info over the phone to Dorty (our usual short term for Dougherty.) Bills of lading were made up later and taken to Dorty to be signed. The first thing I did each morning was to do a yard check to see the number and kinds of cars we had on hand for loading. Then I worked up a noon switch list, sometimes ordering kinds of cars mixed in depending on estimates of what kind of cars the plant might need. As an example, I might order 3 coal cars, one hopper, 3 more coals and 2 ballast and so on for each track. We asked that the train of empties be made up like that in Dorty to save switching in our yard. Sometimes I actually guessed right and got the various types of cars in the right order. But sometimes one material was produced at a faster or slower rate than I thought and another kind of car had to be switched in. Before I left in the evening, I had to do the same thing for the night switch, or the night clerk had to do it if we were running a night shift. Later I was  promoted to Ass't Supt and turned that all over to someone else. It was a mad house sometimes but was also fun. I told you that the most cars I remember loading in one day was 128 but a usual day was somewhere between 65 and 80 cars per day."

(Note: I asked Roy what he meant by "coal cars" and he said that was the term they used to refer to drop-bottom gondolas.)

Under my current operating schedule the quarries at Dougherty and Big Canyon are switched by a twice-daily local freight that runs north from Gainesville (actually, south staging). In addition to its regular consist of empty gondolas, on its northbound run it stops at Ardmore and collects any cars that are for delivery to Gene Autry or Dougherty. When it returns to Ardmore it drops off any cars being shipped from those locations (apart from the loaded gondolas from the quarries, which it takes back to Gainesville.)

When I introduced the current system, the Ardmore/Gainesville local was handling about a dozen cars at the most, and it made sense to have the one train handle all the traffic. Since then I've added more cars and the train is now quite long as can be seen in this photo from my last operating session:

So I've decided to separate the quarry traffic from the other freight.

Once the change is implemented, the current twice-daily locals between Gainesville and Dougherty will be replaced by:
(i) a twice-daily turn operating from Ardmore to Dougherty and back, handling all freight apart from gravel loads from the quarries; and
(ii) a morning south-bound train, and an afternoon north-bound train operating between Purcell and Gainesville (acually, between north staging and south staging), switching the quarries as described by Roy.

Following this change I will rebuild the Gene Autry part of the layout so that I can increase the size of the Ardmore Air Base to better reflect the fact that it was a busy air force base during the '50s. This map from Historic Aerials shows the layout of the rail sidings as they were in 1965, by which time the airbase had become a civil facility.

The change will also allow me to add a few more gondolas so I can increase the traffic from the quarries, and to that end I've already bought some Caswell gondola kits:

Caswell gondolas were very plentiful on the ATSF during the '50s, but the photos that I have from Roy show that a wide variety of cars were loaded at Big Canyon. Here are some pics that I cropped from larger images:

The images appear to show a variety of cars apart from (possibly) Caswell gons and Hart ballast cars. Right in the middle of the second image there's what might be a two-bay composite hopper. I'll be studying these photos carefully to see what other car types I might be able to add.

Thanks for looking.

Regards,
Ron

January operating session, and other stuff

January operating session

Back on the 18th of January I hosted another ops session on the GC&SF.  As we were an operator or two short, I ran the yard at Ardmore. Between that busy job, and responding to requests for help, I forgot to take photos of the session. Fortunately, Rod took several to help us remember the event.

John C (centre) did a great job running the yard at Pauls Valley, and during my post session tidy-up I didn't find a single thing wrong with the cars and trains that he had worked! Graham (right) is running the Pauls Valley local freight, and here he is doing some switching at Wynnewood.

Peter is running the Ardmore local freight, which also serves the quarries at Big Canyon (shown here) and Dougherty.

Bill is running a southbound passenger train, behind my sound-equipped BLI ALCo PAs.

This bloke with terrible posture and fat stomach is, sad to say, me. I'm using a tethered throttle because my wireless throttle was giving me too much grief.

Unfortunately, nobody took any photos of Rod. So here's one from a previous session:

Wireless woes

As I mentioned, my wireless throttle was giving me some grief during the afternoon. I thought that it might be because my rechargeable batteries (which are now quite old) don't hold charge very well.  However, all my batteries still registered over 8.5vdc on my multimeter the day after the session, and since then I've done a lot of train running to restage the layout, and the batteries have been fine.

This isn't the first time that I've had problems with wireless operation during a session. The fact that I don't seem to have those problems when I operate on my own makes me wonder whether there is merit in Brendan's idea that the "wet blobs" (operators) in the room are interfering with the radio signal. The UR92 panel is located under the layout, immediately behind me in that last photo, so anybody who is switching Ardmore, Gene Autry, Dougherty or Pauls Valley is likely to be standing directly between their throttle and the UR92. And with seven or more operators in the room, there's a good chance that there'll be at least one other person also blocking the signal. When I'm feeling industrious, I will relocate the UR92 (possibly into the ceiling directly above where I'm standing in that last photo), to see whether that improves things.

New freight cars for the GC&SF

Between 1935 and 1950 the Santa Fe rebuilt more than ten thousand of its older USRA refrigerator cars using their massive steel underframes. For a long time now I've been wanting to get some of the Intermountain models of these unique cars, and I finally bit the bullet at the end of 2016. Most of these rebuilt cars were modernised during the '50s, and it's probably unlikely that in my era (1960) many still survived in the form modelled by Intermountain. However, in 1960 only about 3% of the Santa Fe's reefers were mechanical cars, and rebuilt ice reefers continued to serve well into the'60s.

Rightly or wrongly, the GC now runs six of these cars, which I picked up on eBay:

These cars are quite low, with an internal height of less than 8 feet (7'3" according to my reference book, but 7'9" is printed on the car side.)  The plug doors were a mere 68" (5'8") tall. For comparison, here's one of the Intermountain reefers alongside an Atlas PS1 box car:

Continuing along the path of buying cars that ain't quite right for my period, I also bought some ATSF Ft-V flat cars released by Intermountain.

These cars are so nice looking that they put all my other flat cars to shame, and I quickly removed most of them (the others) from the layout. My only 'complaint' is that the wheel flanges are so small that just the slightest bump can (and probably will) derail the car.
EDIT: The wheels on these Intermountain flat cars proved to be more troublesome than I thought, and the cars would derail as they passed through turnouts far too often. I wasn't able to work out what the problem was, as the wheel gauge was fine according to my MTL track gauge tool. In the end I replaced all the metal wheels with MTL "standard" (medium profile) wheels, and the cars now operate very reliably.

Unfortunately, the Ft-V class flat cars were converted into pulpwood flat cars during the mid 1950s. 
Memo to self: do research before buying new cars.

Thanks for looking.

Ron

At last!! Another operating session on the GC.

After two aborted attempts, today, I was finally able to hold a second operating session for the year.  Even this session came close to being cancelled due to the storms that hit Victoria over the weekend, leaving us without power from 2:30pm on Sunday until 11:00am yesterday.  Although I was able to clean the track, I didn't have time to clean the loco wheels, and I was more than a little apprehensive as to how the locos would run.  I needn't have worried though as, except for a couple of exceptions, the locos ran fine.

A big thanks to the guys who came over: Bill, Rod, John C, Dennis, Peter and Graham.  I had planned to run the full timetable, which requires a fairly intense 3 hours of operation using a 6:1 fast clock.  We didn't quite make it, but we came very close and the guys maintained their good humor throughout the session. Well done, and thanks to you all.

Here are some photos from the session. Sorry about the poor resolution - I used my DSLR instead of my phone camera (which has much better depth of field.)

Peter, running the northbound "Ranger" is laughing because the session has barely started and Graham (running the Ardmore local) has already been found guilty of blocking the main ahead of an approaching superior train.

Dennis is concentrating as he drives Train 40 (a northbound Fast Freight) through Wynnewood.

John C took his usual (favourite?) job as yard operator at Pauls Valley. The yard's starting to look a bit crowded there, John.





















Due to some poorly detailed instructions from the dispatcher (that would be me), Peter has ended up with a grossly overweight (and overlong) train to switch at Wynnewood. But he managed to get it sorted out nevertheless.

Dennis's Train 40 prepares to depart Pauls Valley to continue its journey northwards.




















The Ardmore local has arrived at Doughty, where Bill is swapping his empty gons for loaded cars before returning to Gainesville (staging) via Ardmore.

Extra 203 South, with grain-loaded box cars passes the Dolese Bros. quarry at Big Canyon. (I'm not sure what Dennis is doing.)

Bill, with the southbound Ardmore local has just finished setting out some cars at Ardmore before continuing south to Gainesville with the loaded gravel gons.

Peter is bringing the northbound Livestock Extra into Davis where he will set out some livestock cars for loading, before continuing on to Pauls Valley.

Graham is running southbound Fast Freight Train 39 through Dougherty.

Peter is making up the SL-SF local (in the background) so it can return to Hugo with cars it has collected from the Frisco's interchange with the GC&SF at Ardmore.

Graham is cutting some cars out of Train 39 at Ardmore, while the yard operator (me) was adding cars to the rear of the train.

Here's Rod with the afternoon Ardmore local, returning the gravel that was collected by the morning Ardmore local to the quarries. I could say that the gravel was rejected because it failed QC, but the fact is that I forgot to remove the loads from the cars during the lunch break. Rod looks like he's having too much fun...

Stay focused, Rod! Railroading is serious business!  (Sometimes I think that Digitrax Duplex Radio has more in common with black-magic than real science.)

Dennis is building the afternoon Pauls Valley local freight at Davis.

Rod is switching cars at Dougherty.  It looks like he has decided to use a different form of digital operation, after his throttle let him down.

Graham has the southbound "Ranger" stopped at Davis for passengers to board.

Peter is taking a trainload of empty 40' box cars up north for grain loading. I'm not sure why he is using the passenger depot track instead of the mainline as he passes through Pauls Valley, but John looks a bit surprised.

Nice job of getting that yard cleared John!

Despite the lack of wheel-cleaning, the layout operated very well. But the relatively inexperienced operators did find a couple of problems with my written instructions that I will address before the next session.

Gents - once again, thanks for coming over. I had a lot of fun and I hope to have another session in November.

Regards,
Ron