We arrived at the Northland Railroad (Doug Matheson's) on Thursday afternoon. It wasn't long until a discussion arose.  Here, Ric, Gaetan, Peter, and Doug discuss something very monumental.

That evening we all sat down for some wine followed by a great barbecue.  Gaetan had fun playing with the electric wine opener, though it did take him some time to master.

Gord Bellamy was preparing to run Nelson Yard.  Bill Scobie and Doug discuss trains in the background.

After lunch, we headed over to Dave McCurdy's.  Again, a lot has changed since we visited last year.  I got a chance to run my Mogul around the point to point layout.  It's over 6 scale miles of track in 1:20...a bit more in 1:22!

The operating crews were attentive to Doug's briefing before we got started. From left to right, (and excusing spelling!) that's Metin, Doug Hayes, Fred Mills, Ralph Dipple, Jan Golding, and Nicole Charette.

I did get a chance to run the drop bottom gondolas that I had made for Doug, along with the original built from a Don Winter kit. Doug has done a lot of work on his railroad since our last visit. It's always fun to see the changes and run my train around while we renewed old acquaintances.

Friday dawned rather cloudy, but we were prepared for our first operating session. Ken and I helped to set out the cars in preparation for the session. All of the cars are stored in color coded trays to make it easier to place them in the correct location.

Jean was engineer and I was the conductor for train 302/312. This is a way freight out of Fir Grove headed to Nelson Yard.  302 terminates there and changes to 312 for the run to Craig Leigh. Here we pull in to Nelson Yard, running light. We had some neat challenges, such as doing some local moves involving facing points   Lots of fun!

Saturday is the "traditional" day for operation and we were pleased to see clear skies and cooler temperatures.  There was some time for a bit of chatting before we got going.

Once again, Jean and I ran train 302/312. We had some interesting match-ups as we all seemed to arrive at Ironwood Junction at the same time.  Both Ken and Nicole are waiting for permission to move from the dispatcher.

After lunch, Ric talked the hosts into yet another operating session We decided to stick with 302/312.   I was pleasantly surprised to see how operations is different each time, even though we were running the same train.  This time, it seemed it was busier at Spruce.

Here, Jan had everyone pull into a siding so she could run the high priority private car on to it's destination. Meanwhile, Ken tries to finish some switching before he has to clear the main to let Jan's train go by.

Later, Jean and I took a thru freight, (455?) and had a totally different experience.  Lots of fun running all the trains.

For supper, we had 4 different chili dishes, along with some venison and other goodies. What a great time!