After making a commitment about 2 months back. last night the L&NRR Knoxville Division held its first full operating session. The invitation went out to my group of 11 fellow N-Scalers and the crew arrived ready to go. After checking out the layout and the usual chit-chat it was 8:00pm and time to allocate the crew to the jobs. Brendan Volunteered to run Knoxville Yard. He may have been informed that he was running the yard. Either way he does the yard job exceptionally well. Ron took on the La Follette Local, Big John started with the Oak Ridge Local, Noel and Charlie headed off to Butler Paper in Morley and took charge of the mill switcher. John C ran the first through freight, a northbound produce train. The timetable quickly got behind which was not totally unexpected, but this was more due to the Local’s not being ready to go.

By the time we stopped for supper we were running well behind the clock, which had been slowed from 4:1 to 3:1 to help the road crews. Even though we were behind time we had run 2 local’s and about 8 through trains. After the break we finished of running the schedule and by about 10:30 – 10:45 when we called and end to the night we had run 2 locals, a transfer job and 12 trains over the layout.

A very pleasing result given that this was the first session with a full crew. Thanks to the Crew. Rod, John F, John C, Barry, Brendan, Charlie and Noel . A special thanks to Ron for helping over the past 2 weeks in testing the layout and the timetable which I’m sure contributed to how well the night went. Thanks All.

 

In the lead up to the night I have built 2 control panels for the north and south staging which I hope to complete before the next session. These will replace the Atlas slide switch controls. The new panels utilize the 751D turnout controls by Ken Stapleton. Nice cct that works really well on the Atlas code 80 turnouts in the staging level.