Pre-op-talk or Orientation

 Before each session layout owners like to give a pre-op talk. If it was for a group of visitors I’d call it an orientation, but for the regular local crews it’s just a talk.

We, a group of layout owners, got together and discussed these talks and decided that these talks should not last an hour.

I think we settled on ten minutes.

Layout owners like to impart A LOT of information. If they have built something new, they want to point it out and show it off.

I looked at my layout as a teaching tool, and every moment as a lesson opportunity. Steeped in team sports, I value a fundamental’s approach. You simply go over the basic fundamentals, every time, over and over. My layout crew from AIR1 can recite Rule 93 verbatim. Not because I gave them a test, but because before every session I read the “rule of the day”. 

The Rule of the Day was a 30 second part of the pre-op briefing. I would simply include a different rule, from the AIR1 rule book, every session. After ten years, they all got it.

When I first had “Real” safety information imparted at a pre-op briefing it was on an ops weekend in Omaha. “If you hear the sirens the tornado shelter is this way”, good to know.

I recently learned another safety tip from a pre-op brief, “Who is the designated 911 caller?”, if you designate one person, I think several will call, just in case.

Every thing I’ve discussed so far takes no more than a minute, TOTAL, out of a ten minute pre-op talk. 

I include things like what train is going to run in multiple sections, which trains are annulled. Is a switch or track out of order?

I’m going to work on a briefing that includes these items, as well as a quick instruction of how to read a waybill and how to address a locomotive on my command control system*. What are Action Bills and how do they work. 

Plus I’ll read the “Rule of the Day”. Today the rule of the day is 104, “Crews are responsible for the position of switches used by them. Switches must be properly lined after having been used”.



*I’m going to Staples and having a poster sized blow up of my waybills. I will use this prop before each session as well as before op sessions for visiting groups. On AIR1 my command control system was Easy DCC. I blew up their page for how to address a locomotive into 8 1/2 x 11 sheets and handed them out at one NMRA op session.


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