Running Trains

Had family over for the Thanksgiving holiday and my nephew Conor was anxious to see "Uncle Tommy's Trains". Did managed to get temporay wiring up for the staging loops, so were able to get some trains running! This first "operating session" was not much but we did have fun. We ran a BR 50 with two silverfish coaches and a BR 103 with three TEE coaches. We were only able to run them from staging into Enkenbach and then reverse out back to staging, but everything ran smoothly for the most part. With Conor running the throttle, I forgot to make sure the switches were always aligned so we had a collision with the TEE running into the rear of the silver fish and a ran through a few misaligned switches putting cars on the ground. By the end communications were better and things were running well. Unfortunately, in the excitement of it all forgot to get pictures :(

Conor requested that I have more track laid by their next visit so we could really run trains. Using that as an excuse, I went to work on Friday and Saturday finishing the switches for the south end of Enkenbach. The only thing left on that end is the siding for the Gesellschaft. Ran a few trains into Enkenbach to check track lengths etc and played around laying out the switches for the north end of town. Since I needed more space between tracks for signals then was planned for, the switching complexes also take up a little more room. The end result is Enkenbach being slightly longer than planned which will move Neuhemsbach down and possibly make the space needed for Langmeil to tight - we'll see what creative ideas I can come up with.

Photos of the south end of Enkenbach: