With the freight house scene now complete, I can have some enjoyable mini op. sessions through scenery. I like to run a short solo session at least once a week. These are simple affairs running less than hour. I recently staged a simple scenario centered around working the freight house and was surprised to find it took about 45 minutes. The plan was simple, take four cars from the freight house/team track area and return them to the yard. In addition, four cars buried in the yard needed to be fished out, blocked so the one for the team track was on the end, and then take the entire cut to be spotted at the freight house.
I began by pulling the empties from the freight house and dumping them on the street trackage on 1st Avenue just to get them out of the way. Digging the inbound cars out of the yard and grouping them, although simple in concept, was pretty time consuming. Once they were organized with the team track car on the end they were spotted. The switcher then grabbed the empties on 1st Avenue and took them back to the yard. It didn’t take much track to spin out an enjoyable, relaxing, 45 minute session.