Operating sessions #106, 107

The latest two operating sessions on my layout were on December 7 and 8. By and large, they followed my usual format and content, with only a few changes in the program, though with extensive changes in car locations and car movements (which of course were directed by waybills).

On Sunday, Dec. 7, I hosted four operators and an observer. Most of that crew is shown below, with, from left, Robert Bowdidge, Leo Pesce, Alex Craghead (nominally the observer), and Miles Callan. They are standing at Shumala getting organized to begin the session; Leo and Miles are holding throttles. 

The other crew member was Jason Schoenmann. He and Leo began work at Ballard, with Jason conducting, but later in the session Robert took Leo’s place when the crews switched places. Here Robert is conducting, with Jason at right, operating at Shumala.

 A feature of this session was the inclusion of one of Southern Pacific’s new piggyback flat cars (service began in June 1953). From the earliest days of that service, trailer flats were mostly inserted into the “Overnight” trains of black box cars, but for some months occasional “extra” movements did occur in scheduled freight trains. That's what I depict here, in scheduled eastward train 916, passing Shumala.

Both the flat car and the trailers were 3D-printed by AJ Chier, as I mentioned in describing my modeling work on this car in a series of posts (see the final post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/06/sp-piggyback-part-7-finishing-flat-cars.html  ). 

The following day I hosted another session, essentially a repeat of the previous day’s car movements, with a few exceptions. One crew was Jim Radkey (left) and Bryn Ekroot, who you see here at Shumala . I enjoyed watching these two work together. 

The other crew was Seth Neuman (left), here conducting at Ballard, and Lawrence Crowl. Seth is such an experienced conductor, that it’s always worth watching how he organizes and carries out this kind of assignment. 

These were fun sessions, with crews quite busy. Being that many of the visitors are experienced operators, I did set up pretty full workloads, and all was done in good season, with few errors. Nice work, and of course fun for me, mostly in seeing the layout come alive to be operated a I intended it to be.

Tony Thompson