January 2008 to May 2008

Only held 7 operating sessions with the local crews during this time.  I spent an inordinate amount of time fine tuning the railroad, (track, switches, and rolling stock) along with some significant scenery efforts.  All this in preparation for another Operations event.  This time we had three days of operation on 23 railroads with 92 visiting engineers from all over the U.S and even one from British Colombia.  These folks believe in Model Railroad Operations and I wanted the CVRR to provide an enjoyable 3 -4 hours for each crew.  I can report that the CVRR held up its end of the bargain as did the 22 other railroads. The visiting engineers where all most gracious with their compliments to the Houston and Louisiana Layout owners.  

December 2006 to December 2007

The 6 track staging yard is under the mainline with access for its entire 20' length, from the side.  Switches were thrown from a staging panel on the facia with toggles.  It was not uncommon to have derailments leaving staging, unless I was the only person throwing the switches.  There had to be a better way.   This line of thought brought me to PanelPro and DS64's from Digitrax.  You can read about that effort on the Centralized Traffic Control Pages.  In any case, this solution has prevented inadvertant switch throws as they can only be thrown from the CTC panel by the Dispatcher.  Of course, this led to adding the 5 mainline switches which then gave the dispatcher full control of traffic.  The Mainline switches can also be controlled by the Train operator with permission from the dispatcher.  Momentary pushbuttons are installed on the facia and tied into the DS64's.  That way the Dispatcher can see the position of these switches in real-time.

November 2006

H.O.O.T.E.R.S was a great success.  My railroad ran smootly and the two groups that operated on Saturday and Sunday where satisfied with the experience.  I also received some very good advice on changes that I could make in the future to add additional interest to a session.

July - October 2006

Ran two operating sessions a month during this period.  At the end of each session I had a to-do list of from 3 to 15 items.  Every problem during the sessions was documented and repairs where accomplished before the next session.   This diligence was to prepare the layout for operaions by folks coming to Houston in early November.  There is a group in Houston that form the Houston Operators of Tiny Electric Railroad System, (H.O.O.T.E.R.S).  Every third year operators from Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas are invited as part of a "round robin" arrangement to participate in three days of operations.  There were 23 railroads and ~60 visitors for the Novenber 2006 event.  As you can imagine, it would not be cool to have folks come here at there own expense and then have a railroad that did not work flawlessly.

June 2006

Invested in RailOps software for swichlists on the CVRR.   This was another step in making the railroad operational.  RailOps is used by a large number of layout owners in the Houston area and is really a top notch product.   It only took  a few days to get cars,industies, yards and staging established in the programs database.

May 2006

After 3 years of rebuilding using code 83 handlaid track and switches on the CVRR with a code 100 handlaid N&W main and a large flextrack hidden staging reverse loop, I am finally into serious operations.   I have had one trial operating session with 4 of the folks who have kept me on track during this rebuild. Only had a to do list of 42 items after that. Over the summer I will be refining the operations concept and will host a number of local operating sessions in preparation for hosting out of own operators at a November event.

February 1998

The DCC stuff is installed and working great.  Still putting off real operations work as I am now trying to decide if I want to use Computer Control, Winlok or the Basic freeware stuff that comes with the Digitrax MS100.  Even with the Basic Program, Computer Controlled throttle operations are a lot more fun with DCC.  It's kind of like a built in, mandatory momentum.  That is, you can't just turn the throttle all the way down if your going to fast.  When you use the keypad on the keyboard, speed drops a fraction for each key press.  You really have a much more granular control over the engines power curve.

My trains now run every week and that's about a fourfold increase over the old block control setup.

April 1997

Operations are currently pretty casual. I have been using a Basic Program, Switcher, that I purchased at a train show a years ago for the few real operating sessions I have had.  As I get the DCC stuff installed, operations will become a much more important part of my railroading time. More on this as I get further along.