I had the Heavener Drill the last session. I enjoyed it thoroughly, Steve uses a RFID system to sort cars, your read it off a screen to sort them. An absolutely fantastic way to do it! I have been to 2 sessions now, one as the Heavner Drill and one I engineered the Ft Smith Dodger. He has a great layout.
Some days a bit of fun happens! I worked with a customer in the UP Wilmer Texas Intermodal yard today. This was my “fee” for coming out. Yours truly on the right! I had a very gracious host for a short tour of an 44AC. Those things are awesome brutes!
Looks like your having a blast Dale! It is truly incredible what those AC's will pull. A picture to put a face and name together is great too.
I would have liked to have got in a SD70ACE, I saw a few of those come through. It amazing how long those stack trains are. It was also interesting to see how they unloaded them. I always figured they unloaded each car completely then moved to the next. But they did the top with a crane then a second followed and picked the bottom containers.
Well folks ProRail is in the bag. We did 2 operations sessions over the weekend. I’d say things ran pretty good with only some minor glitches with the Dynamis control system. Those showed up on Sunday morning as the system wanted to reset itself several times. I have been using Dynamis for 3 years and it has been very reliable. However, we may be at the point we have outgrown the IR capability. So I am beginning to think about a switch to Digitrax or another system with tethered throttles. The operations sessions, we had 2 fine gentlemen from Michigan on Saturday, they are affiliated with a group called The Operations Roadshow. They have been taking a traveling layout all over the place for about the last 18 years. They have operated at a number of NMRA National Conventions. They were very fine guests and did a great job getting cars into and out of the port. The biggest problem on Saturday was that the host ran several turnouts wrong while handling the staged trains! Certainly not their fault! On Sunday we hosted 2 well known gentlemen affiliated with Model Railroader Magazine. Unfortunately that is when the Dynamis System decided to act up! We got the bugs out and things ran pretty good after that. We finished up and while waiting for one of their traveling companions to arrive I got to visit with them about operating model trains in a protypical manner. It’s like we have gone from just running trains to simulating the operations of a railroad company. Very fun stuff indeed! Would I do it again, you bet! We had a great time and met some very fine model Railroaders. I learned some interesting things and saw some very fine railroads in the Tulsa area. This experience has certainly given me inspiration to take the POCR to a higher level. If you have read this far, thanks for dropping in! Take care my friends, Dale
Thats a great sign Dale. I made a similar type wheel stop/ derail. I wonder does anyone make a operating flop over derail?
One of the lessons learned from the lead up and actual participation in ProRail is that I believe we have taken our current DCC operating system to it maximum capability. I do not think that Dynamis is a bad system, it seems fully capable as a starter set and would do fine on smaller layouts. Being not widely used I found most guest operators have trouble getting use to the throttle which is a lever instead of a rotary button. This can result in runaways of the locomotives. We have compensated for this by adjusting CV’s to make the locomotirun slower and utilizing lower count speed steps. Another issue I have run into is being line of sight IR control limits us to the the number of operators we can have on the layout at one time. We tried moving the readers up on the walls above the layout with some success but we are limited by the system as to how many of the readers we can place on the room. I have also seen “confusion” of the system if we are not careful in placement of the receivers. We are currently limiting the number of operators to 2 to 3. This avoids congestion in the layout room and does allow the receivers to function. But we still have issues with operators not pointing the throttles at the receivers or a semi-close aim where they can pick up. We also noted problems with the joystick lever on the hand units because it will move in both the X and Y axis depending on how you want it to function. We have 3 of the hand throttles on the layout that we use. 2 have had “lock-outs” installed to limit their movement in only 1 axis, these are used as throttles only for guest operators. The 3rd throttle is free to move in both axis. We use this as a master unit for programming and such. All units have a very easy way to select functions 1 thru 9 with a select button to allow variables 11 thru 20. I really have liked them for use on the layout for ease of operation. They were certainly easier to learn than other systems. But are limited because we cannot tie them to a computer to take advantage of JMRI. We will soon be upgrading our system. I have acquired a Digitrax 5 amp power box and am accumulating the various components to get it operating on the layout. The new system will have tie in to a computer so we can utilize JMRI. Hopefully we will have the new system in place very shortly and operating. I plan to utilize 2 of the small throttles for simplicity sake and use them tethered to points on the layout fascia. The nice thing with a small layout like the POCR is that about all I will need is 3 of the UP5’s, one midpoint in each aisle and one on the end of the pennensula. We should be able to accommodate 4 operators, 2 as engineers and 2 as conductors. As to the use of the layout for operations, in May we opened it to guest operators twice for the ProRail meet and actually ran 2 more sessions over Memorial Day weekend. I am working to run a pretty busy schedule of operations for the next bit of 2 sessions per month. The railroad is running pretty decently and we are having a lot of fun with it. That’s it for the latest update. If you’ve read this far, you are a true friend of the POCR! I will be posting on progress soon! Take care my friends, Dale
Read every word Dale. Sounds like you have indeed learned a great deal about your operating method and some of it limits. I know I learn a great deal of my MRR's limitations when there are 6-7 folks running trains over here. The limitiations are mainly my own, as it gets difficult to dispatch, be a Yard Monster, Trainmaster and...... Sounds like you have a good plan going from here. Pictures pictures!!
Are you watching the news, Mr. Baker? They can't move barges because there's too much water in the channel. Too much water to float a barge... And that's the current news from Oklahoma.
Crazy weather going on. I see in the news back there. Loaded barges that were reported to be tied down, floating down stream and crashing into dams (dammit). I wonder how much the system, and you great folks can take? WOW. So wet this year. I just hope Aquifers are getting re-charged a bit, if there is a silver lining at all.
