For the 100th Post: The First Operations Session - Hooray!

I had a 5 hour window of availability with my new crew/"posse". Since this was our first session together, I took them on a tour of the prototype area I modeled in Westville and Woodbury.  This gave them a feel for what we are trying to accomplish.

We then watched segments of a DVD showing PRR & RDG steam going through the area modeled and a David Popp video on car cards & waybills.

After pigging out on pizza we hit the train room with only 2 hours left.

The only PRSL freight schedule I have is a 1974 version (the trackage is 1950 accurate) and we attempted to run 4 of the 5 scheduled freights in the time we had available.

Skipping the morning and evening commuter runs we planned to run the following:

1. Philly transfer into Pavonia (took longer than expected to break it down)
2. WY843/842            Deepwater coal drag 
3. WY33/34                Millville local
4. WY841/840            Deepwater local
5. WY79/80                Tank train sweeper for Texaco (Westville) and Sunoco (Paulsboro (off-line)).
6. Pavonia to Philly transfer

We got halfway through.

The yard had electrical continuity issues (in spite of running perfectly the night before  :-)) but the yard crew persevered.

Even though south Woodbury did not have a separate switcher on the prototype , I think it will need one on my layout.

I think we have proven that the layout can keep 4 people very busy and is relatively balanced if we can keep the main yard working efficiently..

In the end:

• We had fun
• There is still a lot of planning that needs to be done to clean up the bottle necks.
• In the fall we will have another go at it.