OpSIG session for the Portland National Convention - Wednesday evening, August 26, 2015

The NMRA National Convention hit Portland this year and the BC&SJ hosted an OpSIG op session on Wednesday evening. In attendance were 16 guests who had never seen the layout before, nine regulars serving as mentors, and myself. This was my first time having a mostly-guest-run op session and I was a bit nervous about what to expect. It was also a record high when it came to crew - the 26 on hand tonight eclipsed the previous record of 19.

The layout was open during the day for the LDSIG self-guided tour. As it turned out this was a good thing. Two turnouts had point come unsoldered - it easier to get them fixed without having a full-blown op session swirling around. We also discovered that a passenger train that had had a few problems staying on the track in the past was now jumping the rails several times on each trip across the railroad. It was replaced by another train until I can get to the bottom of this problem.

Many thanks to the regular operators who showed up. Without your help, the evening would likely have not gone well. Instead we ran all trains nearly on time. One thing about such a large crew - we didn't have to postpone any extras due to crew shortages.

I didn't run any trains during the session. Instead I handled issues such as MU inconsistencies and getting locos and throttles to talk to each other. And shot a ton of photos of the session which are presented below.