Persistent Operations Part II

Edmonds Landing  August 7th, 1959

      When last we left our little railroad we had completed the work for the week. CMO Cannon O'Reilly went home to make his corned beef hash and the railroad was quiet. Sure the shop crew was out in force and there was track work to be done but all movement ceased out on the high iron.  Until the late hours of Sunday the 9th.  A pair of MILW GP-9's have made their way to Edmonds landing with two cars in tow. And come the morning of the 10th and it will all start again. But how did we get here?

    This is where persistent operations comes into play. The railroad never quit. It just needed to prepare for the next week. So the first thing the owner does is pull all the car cars for the cars destined for Missoula and for Seeley Lake. 

Pulling the CC's for all interchange

Those CC/WB are the broken down, the WB's pulled, CC's set out and the plastic sleeve set aside. Any car flags are returned to their piles. 

Putting the paperwork to rights

    The cars are pulled from the layout and put away. The bottom of the plastic tote is lined with an old towel and secured to keep the lower level of cars from rolling when the tote is moved. 

Car storage

    Now to set the week up for action.  I came up with a dice roll chart for the railroad. The results will get the next week running.

Makes for mostly easy weeks

The result

    So looking at our chart we have 2 cars coming in from the MILW and no cars coming in on the GN at Seeley Lake.  Now the fun part. I put on my dispatcher hat and peruse my cars. Which ones would work? I think a pair of boxcars.  Then I pull out my WB, shuffle them and see what's coming in.

Assorted millwork and general merchandise

    But what makes it persistent is I still have three cars left on the layout. They waited over the weekend and now Monday morning are ready to go. There was no grand reset of the whole layout. This whole process took me less then fifteen minutes.  So I guess it's time to run some ops. 

    The track is cleaned with a lens wipe cloth and the charge on the tablet is checked. It'll do this time. Ask Alexa to turn the lights on over the layout and kick the train power on. The number board lights up on the H16-44 and we're almost ready to go. Check the bill boxes on the fascia to see what work we have and prepare to go. Turn over the one minute timer to get the blue flag dropped and we're way.  Just another day on the Milwaukee Road Clearwater Branch 1958-1964.

Heading to work

    Thanks for coming along. In the final part we'll discuss how we use this idea to work for one move or a full operating week. The railroad is always waiting to work and it's up to us to make sure the tiny  1/87th citizens of the Clearwater Valley are serviced in an appropriate manner.