Finally, an operating session

Between sickness and winter snowstorms, we haven't managed a scheduled session since mid-December. John's all better now, though, and Mike will be hosting his re-scheduled session next week.


It's been so long since we had an 'official' session, I forgot about pictures until Mr. Mike got out his camera and started taking some. By that time, we were no longer around the Vancouver Island Logging layout, so Mike took a couple of us sitting around chatting and consuming calories.


Things weren't quite as smooth as usual, with the layout not having been operated for quite a while. Also, I've spent a fair bit of time under the layout working on the mid-level section and pushing around the wiring a bit too much. Even with a checkout a couple of days earlier, there were more glitches than I would like to have seen. Nevertheless lots of trains were run, people had fun and there were no serious problems. Here, the Shay is pushing a cut of coal empties past the tipple.


Mike took the first train north, John following with the train south from Nanaimo. Bob took on Ladysmith and called back "Aren't there supposed to be some cars at the wharf?". Well, Mike and John took care of that, dropping a number of loads for shipment off island. Next, Bob remembered that he also had to handle the log and coal cars in the Victoria Lumber yard. No more comments about nothing to do after that.


Mr Mueller took on the Chemainus log dump (now who would have guessed we'd find him there?) and the run down from the middle level, making the first official crossing of the new log bridge over the Chemainus river. It's only temporarily installed so that it can be removed for work on the riverbed.



Stanley took the log train to transfer the logs that Mike had brought down south to Chemainus.

You can see the preliminary layout of spline showing where the double switchback will be located on the way up to the Victoria lumber show. It will work its way up both sides of the mountain via two cuts so that operators around the layout will be able to follow at least some of the progress of the Shay as it pushes its empties up a 5 or 6 degree rise to the top.



After all our hard work, we relaxed and solved many of the (railroad) world's problems while we had some tea and calories (nicely baked by Pat) to work off over the weekend. Now, back to work on more scenery for the upcoming Bobber convention in April!