More Ops Sessions

 A working layout

One of the key reasons for the layout design and build is for operations.

Per the last blog, I had an ops session with the guys from the Victorian NMRA and had 9 of us in the shed and was too many and too busy.

Today, 30th May 2026, I had another session, this time it was with friends from the N Scale collective with Darren, Roger, Tony S and Tony L. The guys are all experienced operators and regularly operate on Darren's Victorian Railways based N scale layout.

The layout has 11 staged trains plus the 3 local trains, put the pass that can run the reverse direction.

Today we ran all 15 trains and one or 2 a second time.

The layout has never been run with so many trains before and was a great work out for the layout and it ran very well.

Here are a few of the guys operating the layout.

The following pictures are of a visiting box car from the USA. This is a box car that travels the world to peoples layouts. There is a log book that comes with the car that is filled in to track its progress around layouts and the world. 

This box car is marked as "Around the layout podcast".

The box car is now scheduled to go to Brisbane.

Layout shakedown

 First Ops shakedown.

On the 7th of November I invited Anthony Palmer from QLD to run the layout to test out the car card system and train info packs while he was down from Brisbane. The layout ran well with only a few minor updates to be made. Anthony ran each of the local jobs and a through train and hours of entertainment was had.

Prior to Anthony arriving I installed black rubber 1m x 1m flooring in the shed. This has helped with insulation and noise.

On the 14th of December I then opened the shed up to a larger group consisting of Rod Warren, John Fahey, John Colliver, Graham Meyer and Derek M.

The layout again ran very well.

Post Christmas I made some minor changes to the Whitehall yard by adding another siding for the grain elevator.

The next Ops Session will be with a small group from the NMRA on Tuesday the 20th.