This month I have a achieved quite a few things that included: Car Card Racks, Job Cards, Hornertown Shunt Instructions, Maintenance, Ops Sessions, Tasks completed & scheduled.

Car Card Racks Modification

During the Ops Session on 15th Denis suggested it would be much easier to read the waybills if the industry within the town was able to be read without having to lift the card from the rack.

I am trailing a modification and if it works, I will permanently fix in it place.

Thanks for the suggestion, Denis. I look forward to further feedback.

Job Card Update

I discovered an issue on the Build Jimtown Turn & Build Flintston Local Hornertown Jobs whilst mentoring at the Ops Session on 28 September.

This had implications for every session as the Flintston local runs every session.

Job Cards for all sessions have been updated and revised editions uploaded to my website for reference.

Hornertown Shunts

I am in the process of updating all of the shunt movements undertaken in the Hornertown Yard.

This month I have updated:

Sweep Yard to Staging
Build - Flintston Local
Build - Jimtown Turn
Build - Huntington Local
Build - LeMaistre Local
Build - Express Goods East
Build - Express Goods West
Industrial Shunt East

Remaining are:

Industrial Shunt West
Huntington & LeMaistre Locals’ Movements
Build - Oil

Here is a link to the web page.

Maintenance

Two additional power units needed attention following the 15th October Ops Session.

SP Railcar 446

During the Ops Session the decoder lost its way deciding not to respond to any commands and decided "I will just go forward at low speed"! The railcar had to be physically removed from the rails. When tested a week later it was still "going forward at low speed". So off to the workshop!

I have rewritten the decoder settings using DecoderPro and it is back in operation and has been returned to the layout for use in the next session.

Locos GP40-2 7602

I have been still getting derailments of the same bogie in the helix! I asked Don to take a look for me whilst I was doing some work on his JMRI computers.

Here is a photo of what he found the left wire was short and trapped....

Here is a photo after the fix...

The loco was tested over the track with common derailments and functioned flawlessly. It is rostered to run next session when the ultimate test will be undertaken!

Thanks for the help, Don.

Loco AC-4 4123

The rear coupler is "sticky" - it is still on the maintenance list!

Loco 5600

Making grinding noises and seems to be fighting other locos in the consist - it is also on the maintenance list!

My Ops Sessions

I hosted two sessions using the latest strategy since my last update.

Monday 29th September

I forgot the Rouges gallery photo prior to commencement. Barry, Denis, Graham, Peter S & Wayne came unfortunately Don could not attend at the last minute.

Barry on the Control Panel

Graham @ Hornertown Local Passenger

Denis shunting @ Flintston

Wayne shunting @ Jimtown

Peter S at LeMaistre Loco

Wayne shunting @ Adamsville

Peter S shunting @ Hornertown Wayne at Jimtown

Graham shunting @ Huntington

We enjoyed some afternoon tea afterwards

Wednesday 15th October

Alex, Denis, Graham, Paul & Wayne came for the session.

Barry was unable to attend so I was left to do the control panel and mentor and had no time for photos of operations. We had some fun. Some operators tried new things, and some went well and some not so well - we never stop learning!

L>R Denis, Wayne, Graham, Peter J & Paul

We enjoyed some afternoon tea afterwards

Operations EVNGR

On 20th October Wayne, Denis and I joined Peter J for an ops session. Peter has introduced waybills which compliment his train order sheets, and I thought that made shunting movements easier to plan. We had a quite a few electrical gremlins which detracted from having a great session, but we had some fun.