Model Railroad Blog

A Day in Georgetown

1951 USGS aerial view showing the endpoint of the B&O’s Georgetown Branch. (Washington, DC.) Photo courtesy of Ben Sullivan. Ben goes into much more detail on these aerials on his site HERE.

Last weekend, I attended what was probably the most relaxing and enjoyable operating session I’ve ever experienced. It was graciously hosted by my buddy and neighbor Kelly Regan on his B&O Georgetown Branch layout. The prototype, and the basis of his layout, extended eleven miles, splitting off of the main in the northeast suburbs of DC, arcing through town, and terminating at the Potomac River in Georgetown. Georgetown was home to two small yards and numerous modelgenic industries. Trains on the line consisted of an out-and-back turn as well as a switcher permanently stationed at Georgetown. As themes go, it’s about as compelling as they come.

Thinking back on the session, there were three things that made it so enjoyable. These really made me re-think about how I host guests at my own sessions in the future. Although the layout covers the entire branch, and is capable of hosting several crews, I asked Kelly if I could come up by myself and work only the Georgetown terminus, just the two of us. I wanted to understand his thinking and strategy.

Lesson 1: Have the layout owner be the conductor, the thinker. The guest handles the throttle. One reason typical operating sessions are often stressful, and less than fun, is that visitors are totally disoriented. It’s hard to get up to speed as to where things are geographically on the prototype from just a short orientation session. By having the layout builder calling the shots, it’s much easier to gradually get acclimated and have fun running trains. It’s also much more realistic. On the prototype, a crew knows where everything is because they live in the town and do the same job day in and day out.

Lesson 2: Keep the session length on the short side, ninety minutes or so. While there are “ops ’til you drop” folks, most of us have “had enough” after about an hour and a half. Our session was low stress, low speed running, no pressure, plenty of time for hobby chit-chat.

Lesson 3: Operating on a layout based on a location you’ve physically been to is a totally different experience. This is a hard one to replicate. I live in the DC suburbs and have been to Georgetown hundreds of times. Operating on Kelly’s rendition made it easy to feel like I was there. I struggle with how to pass this on to my guests. When they visit, how do I make them feel like they are in LA or Miami? I don’t think I can. Kelly taped photos of the prototype to the backdrop, which does add a lot to the experience.

The op. session culture in our hobby is often typified by a beat-the-clock, grocery errand-checklist approach that is stressful, confusing, unrealistic, and frankly not that fun. When I operate, I’m looking for an experience, not a pressure-filled, artificial game. I want to feel like I’m at the actual time and place, running trains as they actually were. For me, Kelly’s approach is the way to go.

Here’s Kelly’s track plan. The area in red marks the area we worked during the ninety-minute session.

Facing east from the Key Bridge (the mockup) through Georgetown. The Potomac River is in the foreground. Having photos of the prototype taped to the backdrop really improves the experience. Note the clean room presentation and wide aisles.

Kelly uses a switch list for jobs working Georgetown. He staged the session manually, which gives a more realistic and balanced job flow than what you can get with computer generated lists. The length of the list is misleading in that a lot of these moves involved blocks of cars. Working at a measured, leisurely pace, we got through it in about an hour and a half. A key point is that, as a visitor, I never really saw this list. The layout owner, Kelly, was the conductor, all I had to do as the engineer was perform the moves he asked for. This makes it so much more enjoyable as a guest that’s not that familiar with the theme.

Although the track is gone, much of Georgetown has been preserved and it’s easy to visualize what was once there. In this view we’re looking eastward. The Whitehurst Freeway is to the left, the Potomac to the right. The park occupies what was once the B&O Georgetown trackage. For me, having actually been to the place that’s been modeled elevates the operating experience several notches.

Offboard Sound For the LAJ

Here’s the offboard sound setup for the LAJ. I took the photo prior to tucking the wires under the layout so you can see what’s going on. We have: an O scale speaker, a handmade speaker enclosure, a separate decoder programmed to the same address as the locomotive, and some quick disconnect plugs.

As I circle back to the LAJ layout, the next order of business was offboard sound. In this instance I didn’t want to go all out with computer speakers. In a conversation last year with Christian Javiar, he suggested just going with large scale speakers which I ultimately did. The concept is simple. I have a second decoder tucked under the layout which is programmed to the same address as the loco. I’m using at the time. I then just plug that “under layout” decoder into a large scale DCC speaker. If you go this route using disconnect plugs in your harness will make your life much easier in the likely event you want to unplug the decoder for whatever reason.

Here’s the harness which is simple enough. We have the decoder, the speaker, and disconnect plugs.

Here’s the speaker I used.

The sound with this arrangement is far, far superior to onboard sound. The fact that the speaker and loco. are in different spots, is slightly obvious but not objectionable for a small layout. Implementation is easier than using a computer speaker system, although the sound, while still very good, isn’t quite as impressive as using the much larger home audio speakers.

I continue to be frustrated that the decoder manufacturers don’t give us anything to work with regarding offboard sound. It’s simple acoustics. An onboard loco. speaker will always face insurmountable obstacles and, excuse the french, sound fairly shitty regardless of speaker quality. Think of it this way. Imagine listening to music on your smartphone with top of the line earbuds…plugged into your ears. The sound will be amazing. The speakers aren’t the issue. Now, take the earbuds out, place them on your lap, and notice the precipitous drop in audio quality. It’s the same issue we face with onboard loco. sound.

Dialing in Session Length

Having just left “A Yard”, an LAJ switcher shoves its cut across District Blvd. and down The Horn Lead to begin work. The cars have already been blocked in car spot order. Even so, it took me about thirty minutes to run through everything.

Today I tested the LAJ layout in its new 1960’s operational format. What I wanted to determine was how long a session would run. Last weekend I was talking to my buddy Kelly Regan about car blocking on a local. We were discussing whether we should block the cars in the train in car spot order when staging the session. Doing so would make the job out in the field easier for the crew. In the past we’ve both had concerns about having guests over and fearing the session would be over too quickly or be too boring. To compensate we’d set the train up so the cars were out of order and would need to be organized out on the road prior to spotting. Our goal being to make things “interesting” both for our guests and ourselves when running solo.

I’m beginning to change my mind on that. While having cars totally out of order does occasionally happen on the prototype, I don’t think it’s the norm. (Any professional rails reading this feel free to weigh in). While I never felt that way in the past, I’m now getting to the point of feeling that intentionally having the train being a blocking nightmare seems a little too contrived for me. Moving forward I’m going to do that less.

On the session I just ran, I assumed the cars were blocked in the correct order in A Yard ahead of time which made things easier and, frankly, less frustrating. Even so, the session ran a full thirty minutes at the end of which I’d “had enough”.

Another ops question presented itself regarding grade crossing protection. I’ve noticed that most of the crossings in the LAJ industrial parks are just protected by crossbucks. There are no flashers. How do they go about their work without impaling passing motorists? I was watching one of Matthew V’s recent videos of the exact area and it seemed to provide the answer. They just run super slowly when working around streets. (Again, I’d love to hear what the pros say about this).

Summer of ’62

It’s the summer of 1962 in LA as a motorist idles patiently at the Corona Avenue grade crossing. The vehicle is a 1958 Impala Sport Coupe powered by a 348-cubic-inch, Tri-Power engine with a Powerglide transmission and dual exhaust. Mileage? 9 mpg!

That year the Rams drafted Roman Gabriel and Merlin Olsen. Chubby Checker hit the charts with “The Twist”.