I thought I was ready, new DCC, 5 engines that ran, newly upgraded track. Family came over for Easter and we went to the train room to “run trains”
The switch points wouldn’t close tight. The trains derailed, the Spectrum lost its address, and the BLI ended on the foor. Kids and Gkids decided that wasn’t as much fun as they thought. Oh well, the brunch was wonderful and the golf was great.
Now I can fix things and learn how to order parts from BLI.
Hope you had a great Easter. Fortunatly running trains isn’t all the important really.
I know THAT feeling. Not with trains, thank goodness. But, for years I was a software developer. I learned that there is nothing more important than debugging programs (testing trains), before proudly showing your handiwork. Only to have the program crash repeatedly (decidedly cheaper than trains falling to the floor). But I feel your pain.
OK, everybody who had a trouble free first operating session with onlookers present raise your digital right hand…
Ok, anybody…
Hello?..
Bueller?..
Bueller?..
That’s what I thought. Keep up the faith, Art, your right on track. [:D] My disaster happened with a photographer from the “Truth with a Camera” workshop from the Chrysler Museum of Art present. I am forever immortalized on the wall of a museum trying to get the hand held controller to talk to the base station.
As someone pointed out on a similar thread about a month ago, having guests at operating sessions adds to the list of potential problems because you are probably going to be distracted while you are explaining things to them. Operator errors such as not alligning switches correctly, excess speed, etc. are going to be more frequent when your attention is not fully on operating your trains.
Don’t worry about it Art, yesterday I held a session for my family while dinner was cooking and the brand new Spectrum 4-8-2 that was supposed to be the centerpiece of the operation bound up on the first turnout, oi!
I’m getting use to it.Not every train runs on every section of the track every time.When I think that people will want to see my trains when they come over,I usually have a test run the night before to check everything out.Set all my switches for a route,Place my best operating locos on the layout,run them,clean the track etc.,But sometime during the night the gremlins must come in and play with my trains.I usually can get about 20 min of flawless operation before something malfunctions or I forget to throw a switch,or a engine stalls and needs a push or bang on the table.I’m sure they would think that I was a complete idiot if they had any idea of the time and cost that went into those few trouble-free minutes.
[:D] Welcome to the club Art… Never fails. In fact, in addition to Taxes (finishing them right now, procrastinator, yes), for MRs it’s one of the sure things in life.
Jeff, Thank you for the invite. I knew there was club to join that I was never elgible for before, though I had been present when others have joined. Now to see if I can apply to the next club, those who do have successful opperating sessions. Thanks to all for the sympathy. Sympathy is sweetest when the issues are not really important.
Operating sessions always find the bugs. I don’t think we’ve ever had a flawless op session on the Siskiyou Line either.
But I do find if you operate the layout regularly, it will tend to run consistently better. Never perfect, but pretty good.
I’ve taken my HO Siskiyou Line down for 8 months to perform lots of in-depth maintenance on the layout and equipment. The intention is to have the layout back up and operational in August for the special PNR convention op session I’m planning to host.
But before we do that, you can bet your booties I’ll be having a shakedown op session with my regular crew to find and fix issues before the guest operators come over. [swg]
He seems to show up anytime you are already on the hot seat! Keep your chin up though, look at it as a chance to expose all the great opportunities for improvement.
I wonder when things will go right when showing people my layout. I thought I was supposed to derail a whole string off cars and watch the guests look at me funny when I try to put the tiny little wheels back on the track. They must think I like being frustrated.[banghead]
Well, I must one heck of a lucky person as we went down to the train room and ran trains for about 3 hours. Had 2 brand new operators running and not one problem!
Once I explained the Pin system of moving cars and about 30 seconds showing them how to run the DT300R and UT4R radio key pads they were off and running.
I was busy doing some cleaning up of my newest staging yard and all of the others were busy switching, so I really was not paying much attention until they would ask a question about where to exactly drop the cars at a few industries.
Although the layout has been up and running for 4 years now I am continuing to add more track (up to 2800 feet now)and the need to scratch build almost every building on the layout (doing a prototypical layout of the Conrail Lowgrade line form Dubois to Phillipston, PA) slows down any progress in the scenery department!
All in all everyone had a good time and having a Zero maintenance layout sure has made on the spur of the moment OPs much more fun!