Bear Creek and South Jackson Operations - BC&SJ III Op Sessions - Oct 7, 2006
Extra 32 crossing Bear Creek


BC&SJ III Op Session Gallery
October 7, 2006


Saturday, October 7, 2006

It's been a long time, nearly a year and a half since the last time trains ran in a formal session on the Bear Creek. Construction along Roberts Creek on the upper deck and renovation of all the temporary track in Redland on the lower deck branchline rendered the layout either too messy or too torn up for operations.

However, with the new trackage installed in Redland it seemed like a good time for a crew call. Check out the updated track plan. New stuff for this session included:
  • All new trackage in Redland with a long lap siding, 40+ car spots, and a new interchange track to the City of Prineville Railroad. The team track is now waay long which is useful for the Redland local switcher to stash cars on for when the 4 haulers servicing Redland come through town.
  • There are two staging tracks railroad west of Redland representing Deschutes and points north. These allow the operation of through trains on the branchline.
  • Roughed in scenery on the upper deck between Mill Bend and Oakhill. No more operation over the bottomless abyss.
  • Some more motive power has made its way onto the roster including another A-B set of F units, a USRA lite 2-10-2, and an A-B set of E7's.
  • Four new trains are being run through Redland
  • Some more rolling stock appeared
  • All new waybills were used on 'count of all those new destinations on the Deschutes branchline
In response to the call a crew of 8 operators reported for work Saturday night. Ideally the crew ought to be a few more. But we coped by using mostly single man crews.

Dispatching was by TWC since with the new trains and traffic patterns I wasn't confident enough of my scheduling skills to want to go for TT&TO right away. With TWC it's easier for the poor DS to fix problems.

We moved 10 trains over a period of 3 hours or so although some of the crew had to leave early.

There was what seemed like a ton of preparation but the railroad ran, and not too badly given that it had been mostly sitting for a year and a half. Now its time to look foward to the next session in November.

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