Three River Ops

 We signed up for Three River Ops in Ft. Wayne, IN.

We drove out from home on Friday.

The drive was easy. I enjoyed the drive from Winchester to Ft. Wayne, Indiana. Roughly 7 hours.

Because of a lack of interest, only 24 people signed up, the organizers dropped the Friday layouts. We used the Friday as a travel day.

There was not much to choose from meal-wise near my hotel, i settled for a nearby  Italian restaurant and ate average pasta. I would not go back, but it was far better than the Doritos I had on Sunday night!

The first op session was Saturday Morning. This layout was the Northern Michigan. I was Grand Rapids YM, and had a rolling chair. These days I love sit down YM jobs, and in fact plan my Littlerock Yard job to be sit-down.

Here Fred Paepke, the Layout owner, uses “Ship-It” switch lists. I’m not a huge fan of this because of the “Cherry picking” it forces on you, but Fred had this organized well, and from my perspective it was workable and I had a good time.

Event organizers gave us 2 hours between sessions, assuming sessions end on time, plus we had a 1 1/2 hour drive between sessions, not a lot of time. We did in fact leave on time, hit a Wendy’s nearby, and ate on the road.

After a drive through the wilds of eastern Indiana and on into Western Ohio we arrived at the second layout, the UP Marysville Sub Division, in Lima, Ohio. As we approached the layout the neighborhoods looked familiar, and it turns out I was here for Pro Rail about ten years earlier. 

Layout owner Phil Buck has a great layout here. Contemporary UP Marysville Sub. Part of a round robin group headed by Bruce Carpenter, who is no longer in the group. The interesting thing is this groups interchange procedure. Every layout is the same era. Layouts are all HO Scale. The car cards and waybill system on each layout is the same. Every car is built to the same standards, and weathered to the same level. The equipment is homogeneous. When a car is spotted for interchange, at the end of the session these cars are boxed up and physically transferred to the next layout, which ever that is. Cars are interchanged are free flowing over as many as six different layouts. I’ve been told it often takes up to six months to get a car back.

Command control was Easy DCC. All equipment operated flawlessly. I was 18th Street yard. This job is simple. 18th Street is 1/2 West Staging, and Four tracks of inbound interchange cars. Each track has roughly 49 cars on it. Once you classify the inbounds, you’re done. I took a road train after I finished 18th street.

Good group of helper’s, no over-supervision, a huge no-no to me. Everyone was happy, helpful, and fun.

Good dispatcher.

I’ve already asked if I can come back.

We left late, got home late, I ate late, and got to bed late.

Final layout was at John Hanske’s Burlington Southern.  I was Portland Yard Master. I was assigned a “Helper” person who took over the TOTAL Yard operation within one hour, second guessed every move I made from beginning to end (He didn’t even tolerate the way I put the binder clips on the car cards) and had me looking for the exit within 30 minutes of starting a long, painful 5 1/2 hour session. I couldn’t care less about any layout features, so I won’t record any here. My attitude is awful because layout owner John Hanske was a very nice guy. His helper can get fucked. I will never go back. 

On our way back to the hotels we found the Ft. Wayne Historical Society, and dropped in on NKP 765. Very nice people there, replacing 764’s wash-out plugs. We also met a very nice roundhouse car named “Doyle”.

I got back to my hotel about 3:30PM, sat down to watch some TV, must have fallen asleep, and next thing I know it’s 7:30PM. I did not want to go out for dinner so I went to the lobby to see what they had to eat. 

Literally the only thing I could tolerate were a bag of Doritos, an ice cream sandwich, and a chocolate milk. Went to sleep around 8pm. Over slept, I was due to pick up Travis at his hotel at 5 AM, I woke up at 4:22. We hit the road for home around 5:15AM, and I got home around 1:30PM.

So two out of three layouts were very Pleasent. I’m asking to return to the UP Marysville Sub even as we speak. I like Ft. Wayne.  The event organizer Gary Evans, in spite of the MOST trying personal tragedy, did a great job. In fact he was present at most op sessions. Gary is a GOOD man, and I cannot say enough good things about him.

3 Rivers Ops was, on balance, a very good event.

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