Model Railroad Operations: Preparing for an Operating Session

How many operators do you need? 18 minimum is perfect. 20 to 22 starts pushing it a little bit 'cause I have guys come from several hours away. They'll drive three, four hours to operate. And I want them to be sure to get at least a few trains to run. I don't want 'em to come here and run one coal turn or something. Although, I think they would probably do that. Now, do you use a schedule, a timetable, or? We don't use timetables or train orders. The Reading up there ran on train orders, but we just developed a sequence of trains. I came up with the trains that actually operated in the region. And you don't use a fast clock, so you're just running in order? And we have a dispatcher who also acts as a crew caller, and he will then look at his schedule, see what the next train is that's available. And the schedule is so worked out that it just flows. We don't have trains congregating at certain yards, although occasionally it might happen. But for the most part, we just have the trains come. They do their work, they move on. And hopefully don't interfere too much with other trains. Was it hard to set up that schedule, to make that work, all that interfacing of the time and the sequencing? How do you do that? Well, it's trial and error. And through just operation. We're probably on revision 10 of the schedule by now. And I think right now we're at a point, and occasionally it's from feedback, it's also revised from feedback from my crews. Now you run about 30 trains per session. That's correct. So that's pretty heavy traffic. What's the secret to getting that much operation into a session? Well, the secret is really having good operators and guys that are into it. I don't want people coming here, after I spent hours of staging and spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars for motor power and equipment, to just take it lightly. I want them to come here and feel like they're immersed and they have to actually move that traffic over to layout. And my guys are really into it. And I feel so happy that when they come here, we have some fun, like all layouts do. But for the most part, they're the engineer of that train, they're the engineer of that passenger train. The dispatcher takes his role very seriously because he can't afford to stab a passenger train for a cold turn, or something like that. Good crew always pays off.