PACKING UP 1984

Changing operating era and equipment back from 1984 into the 1950s naturally required removal of all of the more modern era equipment that has run on my SP Cascade Line for the past decade plus.  My regular operating crew recognized this and a number of them volunteered to assist in that process.  I finally had packing bins prepared and sent out the call for help and a half dozen showed up.  

 

After I laid out the basic plan and procedure, we broke up into several teams.  One team worked on cars located in the Eugene Classification Yard as well as other cars brought to them.  They wrapped each car along with its car card in a paper towel and placed it into a storage bin.  I chose to have all of the SP sliding door lumber cars stored into their own bin(s).  Similarly, the SP plug door cars were placed into their own bin.  

 

Roger C. and Craig L. confer on car placement as they pack away the SP lumber cars.

 

Other teams or individuals cleared trains and cars from the Eugene Arrival-Departure Yard and Crescent Lake--both ends of the railroad (staging).  Two of these crew members were conversant in NCE DCC control systems, so I could trust them to kill the locomotive consists as they finished with the locomotives on a train in staging.  This highlights another positive aspect of the equipment shift as we work through all of the locomotive consists with the objective of clearing them all from the command station memory.  Once that is done, I will take advantage of the opportunity to change the command station battery which is the original battery and has been in service for over a decade.

 

Rob S. worked on the Crescent Lake Yard (upper staging).

 

Cars from both yards were gathered by car type, with SP/SSW cars gathered in one group and all of the foreign road (non-SP) in a second group.  Several of the other crew members worked on this.  A final crew member cleared and organized all of the waybills which were removed from the car cards as their cars and cards were prepared for storage.

 

Freight cars being gathered and organized by car type or function and railroad.  The forty-foot cars in the foreground are a taste of what is to come.  They are 1950s cars I recently weathered and prepared for service.  Craig P. is scanning for any lingering waybills while Pat and Ronnie LT add more cars to the groupings placed in the Springfield area.

 

Later on, Ronnie LT and Roger C. led the effort to box up the locomotives in their original boxes and packing material.  We caught several minor repairs, notably loose parts, during this process.  

 

The aftermath.  About half of the cars and locomotives were packed away.  We ran out of paper towels and storage bin space.

 

As noted with the photo above, we got about half of the equipment packed away.  The rest is organized such that a second effort should finish the job easily.  I always knew I had a lot of equipment on the railroad.  This process just emphasized that point.  

 

Also emphasizing the amount of equipment on the railroad is my on-going effort to prepare the 1950s equipment.  In contrast to the rushed effort I made to prepare the railroad for initial operations and the PDX2015 NMRA national convention in Portland, I am taking the time and effort to weather and check every item of equipment that goes on the rails for the new operating era.  That effort is taking more time than I expected or hoped for, but the result is already evident as I place longer strings of 1950s freight cars together.