Pro Rail

 Pro Rail is the first of the Ops Weekend events. Pro Rail or Prototype Rail Ops is hosted in a different city each year. It alternates from the Eastern side of the country to the Western every year, along with places in between. It is invitation only. This year it was held in Kansas City. Kansas City is, on the surface, model railroading central. In reality this is not necessarily true, but that’s another discussion. 

Due to my petulance I dropped out of Pro Rail a few years back, which to my regret was held in Tulsa. Tulsa has become an operational layout Mecca too, but again that’s a discussion for another day.

I was surprised by my invitation to this years Pro Rail. Additionally I am recovering from the first of two knee replacement surgeries, but the timing worked out and I was able to stump, sometimes painfully through the events.

Another change, for me at least, is that I can usually be counted on to be wearing the lampshade late into each evening, and waking early with a tremendous hang-over. I limited my drinking, and targeted 8pm as my bedtime each night. I was surprisingly well rested, and clear headed each morning. 

I arrived in KC on Wednesday morning. Their new airport is not well reviewed by me, and I’m not looking forward to using it again soon. I arranged to meet a life long friend at KCUPT, Lee Walser. For the last thirty years or so Lee has been involved with the train club in Mexico, Mo. he has raised his family there. Two of his three daughters now living  and working in KC so I assume it was not too much trouble for him to meet me there. We went to lunch at Arthur Bryant’s BBQ. I have been performing my own BBQ comparison of KC, and Arthur Bryant’s is the clear winner.

Lee and I railfanned, toured downtown KC on the trolly, and generally, caught up.  I had to check in for Pro Rail at the Base Camp hotel in the late afternoon, and Lee and his wife needed to head back to Mexico, so we parted around 5.

I checked in, got my paperwork and name tag/lanyard and began socializing. This year was quite different for me. I go for the socializing and not the layouts. I know that seems backwards, but almost everyone else claims it’s the same thing with them. This year I got GREAT layouts, and the social aspect was the best I can remember. There are so many people I want to connect and reconnect with, it’s overwhelming sometimes. People you know only through the Internet. People you talk to daily or nearly so, but have never seen. Wow. This year was really good for me. A lot of old faces and a lot of new ones. 

My first layout, Thursday morning, was Mike Porter’s CGW. I was Fort Dodge Yard Master and had a great time. I sincerely hope Mike was not too discouraged by my work. Well documented, I knew what I had to do. The trains arriving and departing knew what they had to do. We had a huge thunder storm early Thursday morning which damaged some electronics. The florissant lighting at Mike’s was a bit wonky after some power surges, and a couple decoders were fried, but after about five minutes of trouble shooting we got going. I had no problems for the entire session. No derailments. I’m afraid I let Mike down a bit with my local work, I did not get much of that done. I hope I left the yard in good shape. I think that after one more session on that job, I can be counted upon to do a good job at Fort Dodge. 

Mike and I spent an hour in the crew lounge after the session telling stories to each other and anyone who would listen. He is engaging, I have a big mouth.

We went to dinner local to the base camp hotel which was the worst meal I had all trip. Not bad, but not great.

Friday my layout was Mark Steenwyck’s Milwaukee Road Beer line in Chicago. I have been trying to get here for years and Mark and I correspond almost daily on Facebook, so I was looking forward to this.

I got partnered with Jeff Mutter. Jeff owns and operates a large EL layout in Maryland where I operate from time to time. Jeff has the Proto Throttles on his layout.  Mark has them too, Jeff said he doesn’t get to use them on his layout and wanted to use one, so I was conductor and he was engineer, all day.

We broke for lunch at a local deli where I had a better than average Ruben Sammie. There is no rule G on Marks layout, I did not drink too much, as I was driving a group of modelers to and from the hotel, but this was my biggest drinking day. Mark was kind  enough to stock Newcastle Brown Ale, my favorite, so I could not let him down. The first portion of our work was in an area that is new and under construction, so we hand frequent derailments, and finding out what went where was difficult. Mark uses a prototypical spotting system similar to the SP Spins system, but the diagrams were incomplete or out of date.

Once we moved out of that area derailments ceased and documentation was far better. Busy day here. A lot of work, and my knees were screaming. But I had fun. It was great to spend time with Mark. 

Back at the base came hotel, Friday night was the group dinner. It was at a local Italian restaurant, and this was an excellent opportunity to see everyone all together. Lots of good friends. 

I chose to skip the clinic after the group dinner and went to bed by around 8:30.

Saturday, the last day, I was assigned to Bill Hirt’s CB&Q. I have been to Bill’s once before, about twenty years ago, while it was under construction. It’s not fully sceniced. I shared the Hannibal Yard with John Rogers. We had a bit of difficulty with determining what goes where, but eventually worked it out. I ran a switch job out of the yard doing local work. Once this was done there was little else for me to do there so I volunteered for the extra board. I got two short trains to help finish the layouts work load, we finished up in the crew lounge with a long discussion about organizing events like Prairie Rail and Pro Rail.

I got back to the base camp hotel with my car pool partner Jim Schweitzer, where we corralled a couple of other modelers and eventually went out to dinner across the parking lot at a Mexican restaurant that was surprisingly good. For most of the modelers at this event, Saturday is a travel day, so bodies were scares, but we formed a group and talked into the night. This was my latest night, I got to bed around 1030 and needed to be up at 330am for an early flight.

I had a rental car to return, and the new terminal at MCI was a nightmare, their TSA line beats the LAX barn dance by a mile!

Both flights from KC to Washington Dulles were full, but by luck, and a Southwest gate change, at Midway I arrived at gate 14 at Midway and took off from gate 16! I only had to walk about fifty feet. That made my entire trip!

It’s only taken me about 24 hours to write up my trip report.  If you have not tried one of the NUMEROUS Ops weekend trips you should. It does not need to be Pro Rail, in fact you’re probably better off if it’s not. Get out. See what other layouts are doing. Meet other operators, make friends. It’s worth it!