11th Ops Session on the Welztalbahn

Ng 83 721 has just left Emsingen station and is passing Steinlehof on its way north towards Hausach
I haven't run a full operations session on the Welztalbahn since session 10 with Stefan last October. The trains were staged for a while, but other projects took precedence.

Sascha came by today to take a look at the layout and while we talked about switching, I suggested to just run a session and try it out. To my delight Sascha was game and a short time later trains were running.

The session ran well with only minor issues, like me running the same red signal twice (with different trains), a broken coupler that ended up causing a derailment in the tunnel to staging, and patches of dirty track in the engine facility and industrial tracks, despite my recent efforts to clean.

Things to add to the to-do list:
  • Change schedule to return the Ueb from Talheim to Emsingen earlier. Now that there is a local switcher in Talheim, the Ueb doesn't have nearly as much to do in Talheim as it used to.
  • Figure out why BR211 trips the short circuit protection on the double-slip switch at Emsingen's loading area.
  • Fix broken coupler.
  • Think about to how introduce "events" that require response from the operators (e.g. engine failures, etc), primarily to keep experienced operators entertained..
We ran the full schedule in just over 2 1/2 hours. A nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

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