WRS on the Road Again

Once a year or every second year, the UMG gets together to setup and operate the UMG modular layout. This year's Hillfest was held at the High School in Hillsbrough, NB. On Friday the layout was assembled. When finished, late Friday night, the mainline was roughly one hundred and fifty feet long with a branch of another twenty five feet. Saturday morning the cars were set out at the Industries, there were roughly one hundred spots at the industries, plus the two yards and car float.

Then it was time to operate, the Crews had a choice of six locals, two mainline trains and RDC service. Plus a Dispatcher and Freight Agent. I was the Freight Agent and Junior Dispatcher for the show. Because of the layout size, a Junior Dispatcher was added. As Freight Agent, I helped the Crews with the new operating system and reset the "Industry" Cards between sessions.

After the first session, it was time for pizza. Then it was back to operations. Two more sessions were ran in the afternoon. For supper a few brave souls when out in the rain and barbecued. After supper, it slide show time.

Sunday I woke to a power failure at the motel, but luckily it was only a local outage. Did not want to take down the layout in the dark. After breakfast, we got one more operating session in. Then after cleaning up the leftover pizza from the day before, the layout was taken down and vehicles were packed. After goodbyes were said, it was time to head home. Monday was unloading the car and taking things to the basement.

It was a great time. To see more info on Hillfest visit http://theumg.wordpress.com/posts/

Now that Hillfest is done, it is time to get back to working on WRS. The first operating session will be Sept 14.

later

Doug