Hi All, We held our monthly op session on the Nashville yesterday and we had a few things happen that we are questioning.  The worst by far was the NCE system that started losing contact with engines which just got worse through the day.  A call to NCE on Monday morning and possibly shipping the command station to them for repair!! But there were a few PT problems also that we would like to discuss to figure out just what the problems may be.

One of the problems that we have been dealing with for more than the last few sessions is missing cars in the yards assigned to a train.  

For awhile, I was chalking it up to the crews making a mistake and left it at that since it is too hard to verify what happened.  However, it continues to happen and I have good yard crews who work these positions regularly.  

An example of the problem are the transfer trains running between Ribo and Gresham Yards.  Both these yards had problems with this yesterday and it isn't because it was the start of a new session, we are over halfway through this Daily session which was started in April.   

A wheel Report (Switchlist) will be requested by Gresham Yard to build a Ribo Transfer.  There were several cars missing and the YM spent time looking around the yard for these cars.  He finally decided to look at the cars in Ribo Yard and discovered that they had already been delivered to Ribo.  This was also true for the Gresham Transfer from Ribo and for the Gresham Transfer to Cedar Hill.

I'm not sure what to do or check to see what the problem is but it is very aggravating for the yard crews.

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Another problem that we had was train 984 which had 30 cars in its consist on the Wheel Report (and in the train), coming out of staging to Ribo Yard.  When the Cutlist was printed there were only 22 cars listed in the train.  The last 8 cars had to be queried to find out what to do with them.  They were all on the proper train and heading in the right direction to their destination.  

Before the new Daily session started (in April), I would go to Transportation/Reblock Trains in Staging and check all the staged trains.  I would then print a sheet for each train and verify it in staging.  I would write down the track number, power and caboose on each sheet and keep them all on a clipboard for the Trainmaster/PT operator to use during the session.  The sheet for train 984 showed 30 cars in the train.

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One other problem that we found was that it appeared that trains that are on the Scheduling / List of Train Jobs but were not running, were listed in the list of trainexs in Operations.  Had not seen that before.

All that said, we still had a great time as usual!!

Best, Andy