First Op Session

The first session was pretty successful. 4 of the 6 invited showed up and the other two oted out due to icy road conditions. Dil Huey came over a little early to troubleshoot a couple of odd issues prior to starting. None of the issues would hurt the session, but he had the time to help and I accepted.
We got started after I gave a run down on the way the railroad should operate. Most of the problems were typical for new people on the railroad. They were trying to remember what I told them and get a feel for the way this railroad does business. I ran around as questions arose to help explain my thinking of the way things would be. All operators gave good suggestions for things I could do or provide to help people with the layout. Some of things I just forgot to print out and others will be added later.
We had a small number of small problems that were easily fixed or changed. We bad ordered two cars I didn't have as tuned as I thought. There were a couple of track issues in St. Albans staging. Two of the PECO turnouts needed to have a plastic part of the throw bar trimmed because cars of the next track hitting it. Two turnouts in Brunswick had cars occasionally derailing. It turns out that one of them needing one rail trimmed because the rail was bowing. The other one needed the Tortoise machine green adjustment piece adjusted because the turnout wasn't quite going all the way over. The amazing thing was that in two locations I forgot to trim the styrene pieces for isolating electrical blocks. I found them the next day. We didn't run all of the trains, which surprised me. I was worried that with only one level operating we might need to re-stage during the session. It is a little busy in Brunswick and will only get worse as the layout grows, so two people are definitely needed in Brunswick.
The only item left to be resolved is the radio part of the radio control. We had a few dead spots which shouldn't have happened.
All in all the 4 brave Guinea pigs seemed to enjoy themselves.