This month's activities have included Going Forward, Ops Sessions, Tasks Completed in last 30 days & Scheduled Tasks for next 90 days.

Going Forward

I advised last month that I will reduce the number of operators from 8 to 6. I have completed the following:

Concept planning - 4 sessions
Reducing the main yard to 1 operator
Amalgamation of some movements and associated activities e.g. Ore Train movement including loading & unloading.
Amalgamating some local shunting activites into the Local movements
Detailed planning and train graphs for sessions 1, 2, 3 & 4
Session 1 Detailed planning including running sheets, and Job Cards

I must give a shout out to Wayne for his "critical review" of my Job Cards.

Here is the concept plan

Here is the concept schedule for each session

Here is a link to the Train Graph

Here are the Mainline Job Cards

We numbered the tracks in Hornertown Yard

Here are the Yardmaster Job Cards

The test will be when we try it all out at my next Ops Session on June 3rd.

Yardmaster's Aid

Wayne has made some magnetic strips to assist in remembering what trains are ready for departure (Green background) and which trains are required to be built (Yellow background) during the ops session. He informed me I have to spend an additional 45 seconds setting up for an op session!

Website Updated

I have updated the new operations information and it can be found here.

Session at Peter S's

Wayne and I joined Peter at his residence for a couple of hour session. Peter was building stock yards from scale lumber while Wayne and I worked on our ops sessions paperwork on our laptops. Afterwards we enjoyed afternoon tea.

My Ops Session

6th May

Barry, Denis, Hugh, John, Ross and Wayne joined me unfortunately we had 2 operators who were unable to attend on the day. I modified the program to account for this. Barry ran the control panel and is mastering things as the amount of mentoring from me is decreasing!

I was having so much fun I forgot to get any photos....

The session again showed that a couple of less operators resulted in less occurrences of access to pinch points in the aisles and everybody seemed to be relaxed and enjoying the session. All scheduled trains were run and we finished slightly ahead of schedule.

Afterwards we enjoyed afternoon tea and the associated discussion.

Due to Family issues I decided to cancel the session scheduled for 15th May so my next session is scheduled for 3rd June.

Wayne's Ops Sessions

I attended a session on 25th May along with Denis & Peter S. Wayne sent us the following note afterwards:

"Thanks for today. It was a good run. A few little gremlins crept in (as usual) but overall everything went well.

A summary of todays jobs is;

Peter ran 8 trains

Denis ran 4 trains including the SAR local goods both times

Jim ran 2 trains and handled Lowood Crossing as the Yard Master

Wayne ran 2 trains and did 2 x Dunkleigh Towers Yard Master

I made mention of what my ideas were for operators this year. This was helping to improve Local Goods train shunting and getting a few people to learn Lowood Crossing Yard Master with Jim being the mentor."

I had a very enjoyable afternoon.

L>R Denis, Peter S & Wayne

Wayne Shunting at Dunkleigh Towers

Denis Shunting Eden Park

Peter S entering Waverly

Wayne at Dunkleigh Towers

Wayne Shunting at Mulga Ridge

Denis Shunting at Stokers Siding

Here is a short video of a few trains running

Ross's Ops Session

I could not make the session so Chris joined Ross and two guests Neil & Dennis.

Ross provided me with some photos and narrative.

"I have known Neil for a while but only recently caught up with him again and found out he was into HO Australian, he is part of a group of four all running DC on their layouts.

He asked whether he could bring a friend so Dennis came along to have a look as well as he runs DC as well.

Neil’s layout has an English village and station buildings, with different eras of buildings but with Australian rolling stock plus the Flying Scotsman.

They both found running DCC was different and were interested in what options where available if running DCC with sound or with the standard DCC decoders.

They usually attend the model train exhibitions, so will be looking forward to see what the layouts are running."

Ready to go

Chris getting ready to run

Neil coming to grips with DCC

Dennis and Neil checking what has arrived in the yard

Thanks Ross...

Tasks Completed in last 30 days

Scheduled Tasks for next 90 days

That's it for now so until next time.....

-ooOOOoo-

This month's activities have included Going Forward, Control Panel Training, Ops Sessions, Tasks Completed in last 30 days & Scheduled Tasks for next 90 days.

Going Forward

I have been assessing the number of available operators and it is obvious that getting a full crew of 8 is getting harder as time goes by. A further complication is by introducing additional 4rd Wednesday session some operators have endured some family issues.

Experience from reduced operator sessions has shown some benefits such as:

Lowered "intensity" for operators
Easier movement while operating by operators whilst operating
Less congestion at busy areas and the "pinch point" between Loco and Flintston
Control Panel Operator "pressure" much lower making the job more enjoyable

I have started some planning for a crew of 6 with a length of session between 2 and 2 1/2 hours. This will mean a total rewrite of all session plans and Job cards so existing jobs can be rearranged where needed too,

Control Panel Training

Barry came for Lesson 8 and was "Put under pressure" having to run more than one train simultaneously. He felt the pressure! This was the last training session prior to his first session at the controls with me as mentor.

He will now control the mainline for 10 and 14 movements in 2 - 2 1/2 hours instead of the 4 or 5 he has done during training lasting 1 1/2 - 2 hours.

We agreed he will need a mentor with him for a minimum of 2 or 4 sessions.

Barry thought some visual aids may assist him so we jointly developed some and had them printed on A3 200 gsm card. The yellow boxes contain track section names on the more complex areas.

Some skills maintenance sessions will be arranged between ops sessions.

My Ops Sessions

8th April

Wayne, Denis, John, Peter J and Barry joined me for the session. A reduced crew, so fewer trains, but that may have been a God send for Barry who was running the control panels for the first time after training.