While in Winnipeg for my training with CN, it seemed only fitting that I visit a few local layouts if time allowed. Bill Brillinger extended an invitation to me to join himself and a few other locals in operating on Bob Menzies' home layout. I delightfully accepted this offer, and Bill kindly offered to pick me up at the Best Western on the day of.
Saturday, April 22, 2017 was the day that worked best for everyone involved, and Bill picked me up at the hotel relatively early to allow us a good chunk of time to operate.
We arrived at Bob's around mid-morning and in short order I found myself in Bob's basement which isn't all that big, however Bob has wisely used all permissible space for his layout. Currently Bob has a "plywood pacific" of sorts, but fully operational.
The day unfolded with three of us running trains, Bob overseeing everything, including giving guidance with regards to switching out various industries, and finally Ian Lisakowski performing duties as Neenah Yardmaster. My train wasn't quite put together in Neenah Yard, so I snapped a quick photo of what would be my power for the day, as the trio rolled off the shop track.
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| SOO 415 (RS27), GBW 319 (C424), AC 1501 (GP7) |
It wasn't long after I had taken a few photos that Ian had my train made up and all ready to go. Bob runs a double shelf style layout, with the yard on top tucked away just behind the stairway, and a slow descending grade to the bottom level. I can't exactly recall, but my train was somewhere in the range of 35-45 cars long and with a couple short blasts on the horn, train FLO 97 began the descent down to switch out the various industries at International Papers and Thilmany Packaging.
The photo below shows the peninsula along with the short spur off to the right where a couple more customers are located, which I had to pull and spot cars at each customer. It was quite the challenge, but having no one else in my way due to my location, I managed to get the work done as efficiently as an amateur operator can do ;)
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| Pickups for FLO 97 at International Paper. |
At some point in the early afternoon Bob and his wife, Margaret offered me a Vernor's Ginger Ale, a specialty from Michigan if Im not mistaken. I personally do not care much for pop anymore, but this stuff was incredible. Needless to say, at the end of the day I had happily polished off a total of 4 cans. I made sure to not take long breaks from switching and only sporadic sips though, as work had to be done!
Throughout the day, Bob came around snipping trip pins on MANY couplers, and even did some changing out of awful wheel sets and replaced them with beautiful IMRC wheel sets. This helped improve the operations success by a huge margin.
My only real flaw was getting hung up on a couple of switches in and around the peninsula industries while operating FLO 97. A few of the switches had Bob's specialty kitty litter ballast caught up in the points which resulted in multiple derailments, but with a little bit of patience all was well. Just as I was drawing to a close on switching International Paper, a supper call was made by Margaret.
The weary crew, busy from working on various jobs all day, hurried excitedly upstairs to find a most impressive roast beef dinner awaiting us. Lots of laughs and stories alike shared around the table with a beautiful banana cream pie to devour for dessert. To say we as a crew were spoiled is an understatement.
With supper behind us, there were a few more hours left to operate before we would shut everything down for the evening. I wasn't too long finishing up my work on FLO 97 and had the train back up in Neenah Yard. Ian explained that he had a FLO 93 train built up also for the lower deck of the layout, and I coupled onto that and was off.
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| Pickups for FLO 93 at IMCO Pulp & M&I Drilling. |
Very soon after, it all became very congested as Bill had FLO 91 and Ricoh had FLO 95 all working down in the same vicinity. However, it provided real life scenarios with congestion in very close proximity with a lot of work to be done.
Sometime after supper, Margaret reappeared downstairs with a tray full of fresh chocolate chip cookies. Of course this warranted a need to have another ginger ale with a few cookies!
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| FLO 93 preparing to head downgrade. |
Needless to say, I got as much done as I could, and the night was drawing to a close all too quick. I figured it would be better to get half of the work done and return to the yard, as opposed to getting 3/4 or so of the work done and leaving the power and all the cars down at the industries.
I will end this post with a shot of my train just moments after leaving the yard with train FLO 93, before I headed downgrade.
A huge thanks goes out to Bill for inviting me, and also to Bob and Margaret for being such welcoming hosts and providing a fun day of operating with some incredible food!
Last but not least a couple photos graciously supplied by Bill of some of us operating throughout the day, and an operating selfie! :)
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| Myself, Bob, and Ian (Pictured left to right): Bill Brillinger Photo |
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| Bill & Ricoh (Pictured left to right): Bill Brillinger Photo |
- Caleb
