Friends,

It is with great pleasure that I share my excitement that shortly before 7:00 pm last night (1/22/17) I completed the first on-layout ProTrak OP Session on my Susquehanna Valley Line RR. After 550+ paper sessions it sure did feel good to actually move the trains. In general things went well, all cars ended up where ProTrak said they should be. The layout needs some attention namely in Tortoise switch machine repairs. I think some of the brass wipers inside the Tortoise are loose. I've already made some train scheduling changes in ProTrak and added a storage yard.  I ran this first OP Session solo; but on this coming Friday my good friend and mentor Bruce Metcalf is coming over for the next OP session.

Interesting back story - Sometime in the last 3 or 4 weeks I was looking thru some of the saved e-mail messages I keep in a notebook. Of course most of them are from the Canadian Jim. But back in Dec. 2006 I apparently asked on the ProTrak Yahoo web site about the applicability of ProTrak for operations on a "Small layout". ( I bought ProTrak in February 2007.)  Andy replied, and so also did the former band director, former church organist, former friend of Andy, former this, former that , and former ProTrak advocate. This Midwest Jim wrote "Finally, run this session completely through on paper then transfer the switch lists to the railroad and operate. Be sure that you report trains in the order that you have them schedule to arrive in the various yards so that train to train connections are made properly."  And that is exactly what I did. I had almost 40 pages of switch lists, work orders, and cut lists.

thanks to all who helped me reach this milestone.

Joe