Latest GM&O News

The past month has seen a lot of work on the railroad and some much-needed attention.

Signals/CTC: Several days were spent reconfiguring port assignments for switches and signals on the Grapevine system in order to convert 3-aspect (R-Y-G) over to 4-aspect (R-Y-G-L) on those signals where lunar is available. PanelPro was recently upgraded to add such signalling which ultimately will make it easier to execute the "call-on" function of signals as OS blocks especially to allow trains to switch back and forth across on OS without having to have the dispatcher clear every movement. This meant a lot of rewriting of the Logix in PanelPro but, more importantly, we are now in the process of getting the marker lamps active on ALL signals to show route/speed. The operating session this past Saturday revealed some missed port reassignments and some bugs which have since been worked out both physicallg and within the software.

Trains: After a lot of reflection of the past several sessions and my desire to make traffic flow better I've been tweaking the trains on the railroad the past few days. The Meat/Banana train is now an every-other-day operation (south on M-W-F, north Tu-Th-Sat). I'm adding additional Burlington run-throughs where are being stocked with cars that are no longer "in service" in ProTrak. Since these trains did no interchange on the line it makes good sense to just make them fixed consists and run them as through trains.

Bob Lehnen (Indianapolis) is providing additional information on C&EI operations in the St. Louis area in the near future so I anticipate having some new interchange opportunities happening at Mitchell Yard soon.

The big push here is to get cars out of the online yards and get them into other routings which keep them moving without blocking the yards. This means cutting back on customer car orders, too. With a little luck the next couple of session will see several customer tracks getting cleaned out and a little more realistic supply of cars to/from them happening.

Equipment: Monday I managed to get four of the GP-30's back into operation. Discovered that the issue was related to advanced consisting still being programmed into the decoders. Now we have a set of 4 blackbirds ready to go into ComEd service at last WITH SOUND EVEN! Also recovered the operation of the E-8/E-7 lashup (same issue). Realizing that I've got some decoders that have gone bad, fortunately they're all DH-121's from Digitrax (the cheap ones) so I don't feel too bad dropping them into the trash since after the $15.00 warranty fee and postage I can just replace the decoder with a new one and not have to wait four weeks for it! Will have a couple of sidelined F-3's into operation later this week including an InterMountain unit I've had on the workbench for six months!

Website: As the weather turns colder I'm starting to spend some time shooting new photos of the railroad for the website so be looking for significantly upgraded and updated pages under the "Tour the Railroad" menu button.

That's it for now... Time to get back to work!!!

2010 Fall Season on the GM&O Eastern Division

Operatings sessions on the Eastern Division are scheduled about once every 4-5 weeks. If you are interested in visiting and operating, please contact me directly!

Upcoming Session and Work Dates for the Rest of the Fall 2010 Season are:

October 16 (Saturday) - Work Day
Prep the railroad for the next two weekends of operations. Physical plant work (rail/loco wheel cleaning, wiring/power issues, etc.)

October 24 (Sunday) - Tailgate n Trains!
Watch the Chiefs v. Jags game starting at noon then operate 3:15 - 6:30 p.m.

November 6 (Saturday) - Peoria Connection
Guest operators visiting from Peoria, IL - a GM&O town, of course!

November 26 (Friday) - Thank God for Trains Day!
Operate the GM&O Eastern Division all day starting at 10:00 a.m.

December 18 (Saturday) - Christmas Party and Mini-Session
Come join us for an evening of good food and drink PLUS trains!