A weekend of trains

Phew, I'm back home after a long weekend... It started off on Friday evening with a short visit to Silicon Valley Lines to test run switching at the paper mill. I'm quite pleased with the track arrangement. My test run involved a turn from Nowheres Yard with 12 cars switching out 13 cars that where already at the paper mill complex. The paper mill yard and loading tracks can take up to about 30 cars and still make it an enjoyable switching exercise.

First test run to switch the paper mill at Silicon Valley Lines.

Saturday morning I left the house early to make it to the LD/Ops SIG meet in Novato in time for the 9am start. There were great presentations and discussions, familiar faces, hallway chats, and lots of new ideas to think about.

LD/Ops SIG meet in Novato.

After a good dinner it was time for the evening layout visits. Here are some interesting details of the various layouts that I visited.

Western Pacific (Ernie Simard layout): lighted warehouse and interesting gondola road

Colville, Republic and Palouse (Verne Alexander layout): Tracks in the forest

Milwaukee Road (Joe Deveney layout): Super-fine catenary that looks good even in photos

The State Belt (Bill Kaufman layout): Tracks in urban jungle

Western Pacific (Jim Providenza): Cement Mill

I stayed over night in Novato, and went to Andy Schnur's Chesapeake & Ohio for the Sunday operations session.

My coal train during the Sunday Operations Session at Andy Schnur's C&O

This was (once again) a great weekend of trains, friendly chats, learning something new, and of course lots of fun. A big thank you to the organizers and presenters, as well as to everyone who opened their home to let people visit and/or operate their layouts.