Sunday 7 March 2010 - A Red Letter Day!

Sunday 7 March was a big day for Keene as Rich Key, my first visiting operator, took the controls for a brief session. A push with the track laying and wiring has seen most of the back half of the layout virtually completed.

S-4 #1274 performed faultlessly, despite, some would say, its MRC drop-in decoder, with Rich at the throttle and me acting as yardmaster. There were also runs for F-3 #4227, less its headlight (The bulb has popped), and RDC-2 #6118 running silently. The session turned up no serious problems other than the transformer appearing to be sporadically singing to itself. This does not appear to cause any other issues but obviously needs looking at. It turned out that the problem was a QSI wand lying within the transformer's magnetic field and vibrating madly. It took visitor number 2, Chris Castle, to find that!

Here is Chris at the controls, also doing some switching with #1274. There will be none of this leaning on the layout when the scenery is constructed!!

2 comments:

Tony Morton said...

A landmark moment indeed. It must be very satisfying to reach this stage. Now to work out the train timetables and keep those services on time!

Mike Hamer said...

Hello Phil,

I just stumbled across your blog and was so glad to see the pictures from your first operating session. I see you haven't posted in a long while. Hope the trains are still running along your version of the Boston and Maine. My trains continue to run and I still encounter great joy when I am in the train room!

All the best,
Mike Hamer
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada