We’ve just wrapped up our Fall 2017 Open House, and we want to thank everyone who came out to see the Sierra Pacific Lines in action!

Opening day, Saturday, was… well, not our finest. The Sierra Pacific Lines often gets a bit cranky at the start of an Open House, but this time she was in full rebellion mode. We had some major problems with the boosters in our Whiskey block, which brought the railroad to a halt. For a while, it felt like we were going to spend as much time fixing the layout as we would running trains. Our communication with our visitors was not as good as it should have been, and for that we apologize. Happily, our outstanding electrical crew was able to rig up a fix and we had trains rolling by late afternoon.

Sunday was a much better day — aside from a few known glitches, the layout ran like a champ, and the guests — who came in droves — clearly had a much better time. Tuesday night was busy as well and the layout ran just as smoothly. We saw lots of smiling faces, and that’s what we like.

Many of our visitors were exceptionally generous and offered more than our suggested donation, which we appreciate — donations from the Open House play a big part in keeping the Pasadena Model Railroad Club going!

Our next Open House usually takes place in the spring, but we are eager to finish our DCC wiring project (the remaining step being to convert the Alhrambra and Zion yards). Give us some time to make our plans, and we’ll announce dates soon.

We’ve set the dates for our Fall 2017 Open House: Saturday, November 18th; Sunday, November 19th; and Tuesday, November 21st. Opening times and other information will be posted on our Open House page.

Additionally, we’ve been invited to participate in the Summer Train Festival at Union Station on July 15th, 2017. It’s only a short drive from Union Station to the club, so we’ve decided to open our doors to the public that Saturday as well. Once folks have had their fill of full-size railroading at Union, they can hop on over for some 1:87-scale action on the Sierra Pacific Lines!

Some of you might be wondering what happened to our Spring 2017 open house. Because work on the east end was still progressing, and as we were still troubleshooting on the west end, we decided to have a smaller event for friends and family on April 29th. We barbqued, we gave tours, and we ran some trains, and a good time was had by all. We look forward to opening our doors to the public in July and November — and possibly even more often in the future. Stay tuned!

First, allow me to show you a sight that hasn’t been seen in about a year:

That’s the Zion freight yard, stuffed full o’ cars! We’re officially up and running on the western end of the railroad, from Midway to Zion; now we need to get cars onto the rails and organized into trains. (And lemmie tellya, you don’t appreciate a re-railing ramp until you’ve had to load a massive freight yard with a couple hundred cars.)

Our next step: Practice, practice, practice. Though the track plan hasn’t changed, how that we have DCC, the Sierra Pacific Lines is essentially a whole new railroad. Dispatching is different and operating is very different. In order to be cab qualified, PMRRC members have to know the entire railroad, including where the blocks begin and end (no easy task with a 28-scale-mile mainline). Under DCC, the computer (usually) won’t let the operator overrun a block, but the operator has to know these points forwards and backwards in order to avoid the train lurching to an embarrassing (and unrealistic) halt.

So for now, we have to run trains, run more trains, and run a few more trains — and who could complain about that? After all, we’ve been waiting a year to run trains on our railroad! Our test runs are also allowing us to do some final debugging; for now the railroad is running extraordinarily well, so well that it’s sometimes hard to contemplate the enormity of what we have completed so far.

We’re eager to share our updated railroad with the public at our upcoming Grand Re-opening and Open House, scheduled for November 15th, 19th, 20th and 22nd. You’ll find all the details at our Open House page, and we hope you can join us — we’re eager to show you our new railroad!