Trackwork on the Baltimore and Ohio L&S Division

Here's one of the tricks that I learned about rails, to keep them from kinking on you. On flex track, one rail moves and one rail is stationary. When you assemble the rails you have to put a stationary against a moveable, otherwise the rails move and you get kinks. Now, the rail cannot move. It's fastened in place. In the beginning I had several roads in my mind, and I had several different roads of equipment and rolling stock, and it became confusing, because it was always something that you wanted to do. I realized that you have to focus. Yes. Like everything in life, it has to be one thing at a time. If you don't do one thing at a time, all you do is lose time. Go off in different directions and whatnot. Yes, absolutely. How do your passenger trains play a part in the operation of the layout? Well, they do like to be enoded. The passenger trains were becoming very popular in the fifties. The railroads were making profits for the first time since World War 2. And we run those in our operation sessions at least four trains in an operating session, to give a little confusion to everybody. Yeah, explain that. I know what you mean by that, but explain that if you would. Well, when a scheduled passenger train it has the right of way, not like it is today. And freight trains have to get off the main line to allow the passenger trains to come through, and it slows everything down and it makes the session last much longer. And it frustrates the freight operators. Definitely. Now do you use the dispatcher to do that, to coordinate those moves? Or is it just, No, I print a sheet on the computer and we follow the sheet. And it's usually 10 moves, 10 different trains across the whole operation. And the freight train has to go by point A before, I mean the passenger train has to go by point A before the freight train can get there. Right. As an example. Yes. And then do you set up meets for them at X, Y, or Z? Yes, we try to do that, it gives it a little more realism in the feel of reality. And is that always the same at every operating session, or does that change? No, it changes. I have four different scenarios we follow, on four different operating sessions. Oh, okay. It makes it a little more interesting.