This year our bi-annual local operating weekend, called “BayRails,” had its tenth renewal, and it took place last weekend. Actually it began, not 20 years ago as you’d guess, but 22 years ago, because we missed 2021 in the pandemic. This year my layout hosted two operating sessions on successive days, and they happened to be my sessions #100 and #101.
The first day the crew was Al Daumann, Dean Deis, Mike Allee and Mel Johnson. Al had operated before on the layout. He’s shown below working at Shumala with Mike, and I was impressed he wore a very appropriate shirt for a layout with five packing houses and lots of reefer traffic. And you can tell he’s the conductor here, with all kinds of paper in hand.
The other crew was Dean and Mel, shown below figuring out their work at Ballard while running the Santa Rosalia Local. If I remember right, Dean was the conductor on this side.
The following day the crew comprised Joe Green and Lou Adler, who had been here before, and newcomers Tim Costello and Mike Cee. The photo below shows Joe (clearly conducting) and Tim holding the throttle, in the middle of switching Shumala.
On the other side of the layout, Lou and Mike were sorting out the work they needed to do at Ballard. I think this was Lou’s turn to conduct, which is probably why he looks really thoughtful here.
When we were all done for the day, Tim wanted a photo that would include me, so he took the shot below, including his operating partner Joe. I hadn’t thought about getting a photo with me in it, so I’m glad Tim had the idea to take one.
Really nice sessions both days for the most part, though we continued to be bedeviled by the track issues at the Santa Rosalia throat switches. That is just going to have to be rebuilt entirely. I’ve spent several multi-hour sessions trying to get it right, and it’s true that the subsequent problems are often a little different than before, but the track just isn’t what it should be.
Of course, as readers of the blog will know, I resisted as best I could, the threat of “Host Flaw Hysteria” (a malady originally recognized by Paul Weiss), in which problems in five percent of the session make the host think it was 90% ruined, while actually everyone had a good time. But that trackage does need to be fixed.
Tony Thompson
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