The Passing Track

August-September, 2009

Newsletter of the Rogue Valley Model Railroad Club

PO Box 1362—Medford, OR 97501

Suggestions Requested for Operation Session Changes

Since fifteen club members took on their respective roles from dispatcher to Yard Masters to engineers to make the P&E come alive in a historic operations session August 8, the Club has since held additional op sessions. Some suggestions have already surfaced. For example, an additional operational task was suggested for the East Hauler (currently a single and short task) once the train gets into Pelican Yard, which was noted to be the most busy and complex of operations. Other operational tasks were suggested to be added to the Butte Falls Turn and both the BN and SP yards to relieve some overloading on some of the operators and to smooth out the overall operation of the P&E. The ops sessions have also uncovered some trackwork glitches resulting in replacement of some turnouts. The heretofore unused industrial sidings are generally not cleaned for the Sunday public run sessions, and a fair share of issues was related to dirty track. There were also some minor difficulties related to DCC.

With the Board approving the purchase of several extra throttles, both guests of the club and club members without DCC equipment will have the ability to be part of any ops session. Once all the cars on the layout have resistors installed on their wheels, the signal system will perform as planned and give engineers more of a feel for what lies on tracks ahead. Ops positions, however, will remain somewhat varied, with a range of complexity to accommodate veteran operators and newbees, and with an estimated time to complete the operations task to accommodate those who can stay the entire ops session and those who can only stay for part of the session.

On Labor Day weekend, the day following the Saturday ops session, Dave Dexter from Eugene, an expert in DCC, tested our system, gave us some good suggestions, and provided some timely advice on turning the system on and off. The result of Dave’s efforts and the continual learning from each operations session will ultimately result in operations sessions that are more balanced and more prototypical.

Program For September General Meeting

The program for the September General Meeting (starting at 7:00 PM at the Clubhouse) is a demonstration on how to weather rolling stock. Kill that shiny plastic look! Larry Tuttle will show us some simple and quick techniques to give a rail car a realistic look.

September Board Meeting Summary

The Board met on September 9, 2009 with four board members and nine club members present. The club’s finances remain in good order with Jerry Hellinga reporting sufficient funds to cover all of the expected expenses for 2009, including items budgeted for purchase for the permanent layout. During subsequent actions, the Board approved expenditures for additional guest throttles, lumber and carpentry related expenses for the completion of drawers, fascia and other carpentry projects, signal related expenses as we begin the wiring and signal installation (this fall after the last Sunday open house) on the remaining part of the layout, and replacement turnouts and miscellaneous items related to track. To maintain fiscal accountability and to make sure we maintain a sufficient reserve in our bank account, it was a good time to remind everyone that any purchases must follow the procedures the Club has in place. You MUST request authority to purchase items from the Board PRIOR to purchasing. Signal wiring for the first phase of the permanent layout will begin after the final public show in October. Some DCC redistricting will occur. It was agreed that the Club should begin to inventory items donated to the Club for the Eugene Swap Meet in April, recognizing that the Club could not be ready for the Thanksgiving weekend show in Medford.

Jay Mudge, Ed Kleinman and a cast of thousands (well…not really) are busy with their respective tasks to collectively move some 340 cars in this Labor Day weekend op session. This photo illustrates that there are quite a few operators moving trains across the layout.

Ed Kleinman and Tom Baldwin get a few pointers from the master operator, E. Don Pettit.

Dave Spakousky gives a few pointers to the younger and newer members of the Club.

Club guest Mark Babbitt, visiting from Arizona, works the Butte Falls turn with Carlos Furcal.

October 2009 Calendar of Events