Rail Group 2025 Report

 This last weekend I attended an ops weekend put together by the Chicago Rail Group.

I chose to drive, which in my opinion worked out well for me. Because my wife was not going with me I left early! I departed Winchester at 5 am on Wednesday February 19th.

My original plan was to overnight in Columbus, OH., but I arrived in Columbus at 11:00am so after lunch I pressed on. The GPS told me I’d arrive at the base camp hotel at 4:00pm CT, but upon arrival at the Chicago city limits the traffic took a shit!

I arrived at the hotel at 5:30pm.

Dinner in the hotel restaurant was good, rigatoni, but expensive, so I never at there again all weekend.

My room was very nice, my wife would have loved this hotel, so I rate the Double Tree highly. Thursday morning I ran an errand to the grocery store for some shaving gear, and stopped at Duncan Doughnuts for a coffee roll. My first Op Session was not until 4 pm, this was a so called bonus session, so I planned to go see the captured German Submarine U-505 at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. My advice to all of you is to skip this. It cost $82 dollars +/- to take a 15 minute tour. I did, in fact, walk through a German Submarine, but $82!?

I then met Al Daumann for an early dinner, pizza, and off to the Spokane Southern Layout.

I ran Worlly Yard. The car cards were somewhat difficult to make out, what goes where, etc, but after about an hour or so I feel I could run that yard next time even more efficiently. My “Local Helper” had some ideas that I found “unusual”, I do not cherry pick when classifying a yard, EVER. Additionally the placement of the turnout controls was ergonomically “problematic”. Eventually I settled on a system I could live with, I’m not sure anyone else could.

This session wrapped up around 10pm. By the time we got back to the hotel the bar was closed, and against my better judgement, I could not help myself, I stayed up talking with other modelers/operators until after midnight. 

I woke up at 5:30 am, Friday morning, could not get back to sleep, and eventually met others for breakfast around 8am. I read! Stretched, lollygagged, etc.

Al Daumann and I went out railfanning and met up with Jim Radkey, Bill Hanmer, and Ed Slintak,  in Lombard, IL. We watched one double stack train pass, then moved off to Lombard Hobbies. I have to say, I have NEVER seen a hobby store with more stock, and VERY good prices. Everything was roughly 30% off retail. I STRONGLY recommend Lombard Hobbies.

The official first op session began at 4 pm, that is to say, 4pm departure from the Hotel. I drew Darryl Kruse’s UP Evanston Sub layout. It is set in the contemporary era (2025), in HO scale. I met up with Dan Munson at this layout. I want to take a moment to mention Dan, who I consider one of the very best people I’ve ever had the LUCK to meet at any of these events. What a great guy. 

After Dan and I got scolded for trying to take over the main yard jobs, Dan took a road job, and I took the Westvaco Potash plant job. I got a FURX leased switcher, and spent my entire life on the plants secondary track work, never setting foot on the UP main track. My job was fairly simple, using switch lists I pull two blocks of eight cars each, one east and one west and position them for pick-up by their respective through trains. I then spot the remaining MTY covered hoppers under the flood loader for loading. One minute per car. I used my cell phone timer to time this loading cycle. 

After loading all cars I spotted them on the two outbound tracks. Job complete. One local told me this job usually takes most of the session. I spent the remaining two hours or so running through trains, with Doug Tagsold. 

Now normally I would have gotten in line for through trains, you know stepping into the rotation at the end of the line, but as I walked over to the crew lounge I saw Dan Munson and Mike Burgett sleeping on the sofa. There so peaceful when their sleeping.

Doug and I ran out the schedule of trains.

Returning to the hotel by about 1030pm, again the hotel bar was closing, and again I stayed up too late talking. 

The next day, Saturday, is the “Bataan Death March” schedule of two sessions, on little or no sleep. My first session was at Chris Czeryinski’s CNW layout where I took Fond Du Lac yard. Again a steep learning curve of train symbols and waybills, “WHERE DOES THIS TRAIN GO?”

After about an hour and a half , and hundreds of questions of the layout owner,  I managed to pretty much learn this CCWB system. I think I could do this job if I were ever invited again (fat chance of that!). This layout was in HO scale. Set in about 1985. To say paper is the primary theme of this layout is an understatement, Chris has Seven (7) paper mills on his layout.

On the drive between layouts we stopped at Portillo’s for hot dogs. It wasn’t terrible.

The second layout was Lou Steenwyck’s A&IR. This layout moves iron ore and merchandise. I was lucky enough to get Duluth Yard. At this yard I saw NO ORE. Not one ore car. Just lots of merchandise. And again the same story of a steep learning curve of CCWB’s and train symbols. After an hour of stumbling blindly through this maze, it began to clear up and by the end of the session I believe I left this yard in good shape. I should note that layout owners are kind enough to never post reviews. Lou’s layout is set in roughly 1959, is in HO Scale. 

Lou’s layout was one of the longest drives from the hotel, and after an hour and a half, and on no sleep, I walked past the bar, which was not serving anyway, and went straight to bed, around 1130pm.

I woke up again at about 530am on Sunday morning, breakfast from the hotel complementary breakfast bar, Frosted Flakes, and off to Steve Cisik’s Marquette & St. Marias layout. Another ore hauler in HO Scale, set in 1929, and utilizing TTTO.

I got passed over entirely for fixed jobs of any kind, as well as any local switch job, and was the last selection on the road pool. So after some time napping, I got a MTY ore train from the yard to the mines, turn and drag ore loads from the mines to the ore docks. My next train was #61, a large over the road freight which finished out the session.

Several of us met up for lunch at Portillo’s  again for hot dogs, I picked up a passenger, Bill Hanmer,  for the return drive to Winchester. We got out of Chicago about 1pm, and drove until I could go no further around 7pm, somewhere along the Ohio-Indiana border. The next day was a fast seven hour sprint from there home, where I took a nap!

What did I forget?