In my case, layout prepa-
rations involved finish-
ing a staging yard on the
south end of the railroad
(critical so all those trains
had a place to go to and
come from!), installing
a fast clock, and devel-
oping track diagrams,
like the one shown for
Everett (4 next page), for
each station.
I also installed shelves to
give my operators a place
to put throttles, paper-
work, uncoupling skew-
ers, soda cans, and the
like without having them
on the layout itself. All
these preparations con-
sumed the better part of
a month of hobby time,
but they were well worth
it when it came time for
the session to start.
So, how did it go? Truth
be told, I just made it. I
was programming decod-
ers and assigning ID num-
bers to one of the radio
throttles as the first crew
members arrived.
3
3. Prior to the session, every
car and locomotive and section
of track was tested. Anything
that failed the reliability test was
replaced. This included two old
Walthers turnouts that were
replaced with new Peco Code
83 curved turnouts.
