My club (mid Mon valley model railroad club) is doing its first operating session. To those out there who have been w part of, or put on an operating session, do you have any advice and/or tips on how to do one for a first time?
Yes,start slow and work your way up as the members gain experience.
Make it a enjoyable evening for all members taking part and have a meeting covering that first operation for feedback and the possible improvements.
Good luck!
Conduct a briefing at the beginning of the session explaining what you expect to accomplish, so participants know what is going on.
Our first attempt was a turnoff because the person in charge just wanted to yell at everyone who did something wrong or didn’t know what they were supposed to be doing. We started out with close to 10 participants, but that one person’s attitude soon caused the attendance to drop to only three.
One good way to help make the mountain less steep to climb – that one with the “learning curve” on it – consider turning off the clock and using a train sequence, rather than a time table. Just learning the ropes will keep you plenty busy for several sessions.
Obviously, a decision to proceed with clock and timetable in hand may have already been made. Nothing wrong with giving it a try. Nothing wrong with backing off and using the time table as a sequence if you need to, either.
Sequence ops doesn’t necessarily mean “don’t keep track of time.” The first time or two, yes, it’s good to just ignore that ticking clock as you’ll have plenty else to worry over getting right. But then you can start writing down times as you let the fast clock run, but avoid being tied to it yet. Then you can use those times to fashion or reformulate a timetable made without actual running experience on the layout. Sequence can serve as the test bed for timetable ops, not as a way to avoid them (which I frankly do at times, but that’s merely an option, not a requirement[;)] )
Jimmy:
Some suggestions:
Keep it relaxed.
No timetable graphs, unless the group all understands them they are worse than useless.
If two trains are to meet at station X, both train orders should say to arrive and wait for the other.
The first couple of years of operations on my layout, the way freights orders were to go to the town or towns required with your train of 4 to 8 cars, and return with a train of 4 to 8 cars. What if any industries you switched were up to you. We now use a car-card system, but start simple.
Simple is better at first.
Dave
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It may seem boring but really do talk things through first before starting the session. And even before the talk – clean the track, totally, like it has never been cleaned before.
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If you are using radios please beg everyone to keep the conversations to operating topics – even if the jokes are excellent ones.
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Aim for 2 hours and see if it goes longer rather than aiming for the traditional 3 or 4 hours. Leave time for a discussion afterwards about pros and cons. Snacks should be held off until then.
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If one guy is pushing this idea who really knows about layout operations, have him be the “king” who goes anywhere help is needed. He may want to be dispatcher, and may well be your best dispatcher, but you need a traveling king. Eventually you won’t
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Do not rely on memory but write down immediately every aspect of the layout that does not cooperate - every coupler that fails, every area that is derailment prone, every wiring oddity, and every aspect of the track layout that worked against you.
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The two most prized possessions at any operating session are a swizzle stick for uncoupling, and a sense of humor.
Dave Nelson
Thanks for the advice so far everyone. Right now, this is what we know
- We have agreed to bring our own locos until we can finalize a club roster
- We have car cards included in the box system micro mark sells
- I cleaned and tested most of the track this morning, so we should be good.
- We have maps and every industry listed
So hopefully it goes smooth, and I may update Saturday or sunday morning. BTW, any more advice is welcome.
Have you checked all the cars for rollability, proper coupler height and operation, consistent weight, all wheels in gage?
Another piece of advice came to mind. It won’t do you any good before hand, but often is something that’s worth focusing on in your first few post-mortems (and it is a very good idea to have those to identify what went wrong and right or things never improve…)
Your layout may be blessed with lots of aisle space, plenty of throttle plug panels for those who aren’t wireless, etc. But probably not. Facilities adequate for irregular and single ops can become overwhelmed with the first ops session. The most important of those is aisle space. You may have 3 trains scheduled into town, even the track to serve them all, but do you have room for three operators at once? You’ll find out and it’s worth remembering what situations, intended and unintended, led to them if this proved a problem.
The layout was designed (before I was a member) to be a public display, so space shouldn’t be an issue. I’ll see if I have a photo of the layout inthe room.
The layout is a double decked HO scale layout with one continuous loop main and plenty of sidings. It was built into an old fireman’s apartment,so it goes through three apartment sized rooms with two levels. Plus a fourth room for the helix. I’ll have to post photos of it sometime.
That is an example.
A-ha. Good and bad to that.
Wide aisles = great for ops
Double-deck = twice the opportunities for a crowd
I agree with keeping things as simple as possible, and adding details as crews get more comfortable. Car cards and a dispatcher will be enough to get you rolling.
A couple of hours should be plenty, but be sure to leave a half hour at the end for people to sit down and talk about how things went.
You need to be flexible about making changes as needed, but try not to change the rules in abig way from one session to the next.
Our outfit started running a dozen or so trains over about a third of the planned layout. We have taken four years of monthly op sessions to work up to running the full plan (and finally completing the main line). Our session is eight hours over two days.
A couple ideas that will help as you go along:
Rotate job assignments. With several people trying out each job, we can find real problems that one person might try to work around. Rotating keeps people from getting bored, and puts a lid on Type A personalities who want to be King of South Yard. We have a blind number draw, so people can mark up for jobs.
Put two-person crews on jobs with a fair amount of switching – people learn faster, a lot of them enjoy the company, and it takes away the burden of juggling paperwork and running a locomotive all at once.
Ask people to take their problems and questions directly to the source. No muttering in the corners. No whining about Bob behind his back. If someone complains about the dispatching, give them a chance to sit in the chair.
Don’t be reluctant to change the operating plan after you have run through the program three or four times. Your program won’t be perfect right out of the box.
Your guys might not want to do this, but we made a deal to stick to real-world railroading practices – for our time and place – as closely as possible. If there’s a problem, that’s the deciding factor.
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Keep it fun. There’s a fine line in Operations between fun and work. Remember that unlike a real job, your operators don’t do this every day and have not (and never will) memorize the Rule Book. Accident and errors will happen. The trick is to laugh about it, and not get upset. And that goes equally for the guys that are goofing off and the guys that are super serious. One has to accomodate both.
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Hold a critique session right after the Operation session. Gather all the operators together in a meeting room, sit at the table, and poll each operator about their experience that session. Ask for any changes they’d like to see, any problems with paperwork, bad track or equipment so they can be fixed for next time.
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Don’t ever try to use demerits as it just ticks people off. Peer pressure not to screw up is a much better motivator.
Paul A. Cutler III
Well, we ran our first session last night. Three operators and one walking us through it. We use micro mark’s cards and it took us twice to understand it. But yeah on to the operations.
This week we just assembled our trains by the old 0-5-0 method according to the cards, but instead of being spaced out, we made the mistake of all starting at once from the same yard. It took about 1 1/2 hours to run it through with 5-7 car trains so it was a nice relaxing evening
Things to remember though:
1-Throw the switches back! So many almost cornfield meets
- We as a club need to buy a lot of car types appropriate for our era
3 same with locos- we had a Dash9 pulling 40ft boxcars lol
4 replace our switch motors
5- make sure everything is wired for DCC
Overall though, it was a nice relaxing evening. We’re having another one next month.
Gidday Jimmy, while you obviously had some problems, I’m pleased to see you’ve had fun; I’m quite envious actually, no longer any ops sessions locally.[sigh]
Cheers, the Bear.[:)]