Notes on Designing, Building, and Operating Model Railroads
A hobby adventure
I made a road trip recently to visit a few Pre-Depression Era modelers here in the great Southwest. I had been threatening to visit one of them for a couple of years and the timing worked out. It was a lot of driving across miles and miles and miles of desert, but it was worth it!
Operating model railroads with friends is one of my favorite aspects of the hobby. The holidays can be a tough time for crew to attend so there is a lag between sessions. I did host a December session on my Wheeling Freight Terminal but I hadn’t been to Mike Weiss’ Kingston Southern layout for a couple of months. It was great to kick off the New Year operating his layout.
We were back to a full crew for the latest Wheeling Freight Terminal operating session. Mike and Robbie were the freight house crew. They are on the left in the lead image. Erik and Tom worked the team yard. This was Tom’s first time operating here and he did very well for a first timer.
The Wheeling Freight Terminal has monthly operating sessions. A message is sent to several interested modelers and operators in the area about a week beforehand. I’ve typically been operating on the fourth Thursday of the month and a layout in nearby Las Cruces hosts a session on the second Thursday. August was busy for the usual crew and only Robbie was able to attend the recent session.
A recent discussion in a Yahoo email group centered on using prototype elements to slow down the pace of model railroad operations. I had a Wheeling Freight Terminal operating session on the calendar and wanted to add a twist for operating crews to work around. I recalled the above Jack Delano image that featured blue flag protection on several freight house tracks. A few of these markers were constructed and installed on the layout for the operating session.