4/22/2023 Operating Session Cuts on the CSX Philly sub

Hello to all! Long time. I don't operate often. Work and family take up most of my time and there is allot of prep work. I take operating sessions quite seriously and I really try and mimic the real CSX Philly sub in my operating sessions. I have 95% of the real trains that run on CSX's Philly sub running on my layout and I try and have each individual train built the same way. Every car has a waybill and is routed like the real cars except for unit trains. All merchandise trains are built like the real trains and are made up of cuts of cars headed to a specific destination. Selkirk, NY is an example. So train crews are assigned to a specific train and they run it like the real train where it stops at certain yards and they set off specific cuts and pick up other specific cuts. Anyway, I run with a crew of 10 including myself. I have found that if I have more then that, I can't keep folks busy consistently and they become unhappy. I know some would have more crew members but I want everyone to have a great time including myself. It becomes stressful when I have too many folks to be honest. With that said, my core crew are all old friends and we have a good time being together. I do have guests but not too often. My sessions are 5 hours long. We could easily run for 12 hours and in 5 hours we only run about half the trains I have. I did my first operating session in 3 years due to Covid back in December 2022. I tried to video the session but it was too busy and I failed. This time I was better prepared and got allot more video this time but still not as much as I wanted. You will basically see clips. Some clips are the whole train and in other circumstances just part of the train. If you listen in the background you will hear the action and chatter between crews and the dispatcher who controls all mainline switches and also the signaling. You can not enter or run on the mainline without his signal indication. Enjoy. I will be out for about 2 months as I am having some back surgery in 2 weeks. See you on the other side. Cheers