Hi All, I’m at it again this year. No more shoveling snow (and hopefully very little coal.) I’m still a lone wolf so far with my layout and until it’s a little farther along will remain so. I did have two non-model railroaders running in the cellar this summer. What a good way to turn up a few more problems! Two falls ago I put out a topic asking for people who wouldn’t mind having a visitor stop and see and maybe run on a club layout. https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/club-layout-posting-12208268 The response was very good. Last winter’s visits were a major fun time. A side prize was that I was also taken to some local layouts to see some very fine modeling also! I will look forward to revisiting my new friends from last year and making new friends this year. This blog will be about my experiences and thoughts on the road this winter. Something I learned in flying was to recognize an airport and how to work myself onto the ground at that airport. I have only been at one other operating session. I was the engineer and was guided by my conductor. Layouts can be quite complex.... Being an engineer and a vacuum cleaner for details is both relaxing and to a certain degree not relaxing. Let me explain. It’s like an engineer from another railroad working on “your” railroad or division. You’re not expected to know the road, switches, towns, speeds and other subtitles. That’s why you have to have a home railroad conductor or engineer with you. Same on big and scale gauges. The trick today was to realize that I was handed an Digitrax dual throttle. My home layout is NCE. It took a little time just to learn which knobs and buttons did what. I was glad the conductor explained what he was doing when he acquired the locomotives for my train. I hope to become a little more proficient with other systems as time goes on. Do they give “difference training” in locomotives? They certainly do in small airplanes and you have to be type rated in bigger airplanes. On the ground for a moment... Thanks to my conductor we made efficient moves and went the full route across the layout without being on the ground once and even found a car that was misplaced on our train. We fixed the misplaced car and I am still smiling. On my first operating session this year I got a bath of fire! Here’s a throttle and a switch list, go to it (alone!) I only stole a half a dozen cars from a yard and didn’t “place” cars in the train for the next session. Fortunately the 1:1 sky hook bailed me out at the end of the session and I was invited back. Whew!!! I’ve been reading the posts about train speeds and operating procedures etc. It’s my humble opinion that when I’m in Rome I hope I can keep up with the Gladiators. When I find the Gladiators are out to have fun I can too. When I’m at home alone, I can beat myself to a bloody pulp for speeding or misalignment of a switch. Another thing that has become very apparent is that a layout or my layout can run perfectly for years until someone new comes into the room. Need I say anymore? Now I’d like to leave you with some glimpses of the larger memories I will carry with me from today. (In the next post...) Nick