Due to social distancing guidelines still in effect, Silicon Valley Lines canceled the May ops session originally scheduled for tonight. We discussed doing another remote ops session instead, and decided that this time we’d try to do a session from the club. Only two members went to the club. Everybody else joined over video conference from home.

This was to test both our ability to implement social distancing, as well as whether and how to incorporate remote operators into an operations scheme. Another goal tonight was to stress-test the club’s Internet connection with multiple video streams in a multi-user setting.

We set up various cameras to record the action from different angles. We also moved the cameras around to capture trains as they moved from yards over the layout to their destinations for switching.

The verdict:
Over the course of the evening we ran only four trains, instead of the 25 trains we normally run.

We can support a remote dispatcher and give remote operators control of a train. We have the technology to do that.

However, our Internet uplink does not support multiple HD streams in parallel. The double-deck arrangement makes visual train control via cameras challenging for a remote operator. While detected sections on the layout work well, and are needed for signaling, not all blocks have detection for various reasons.

Even when the county’s strict shelter-in-place orders are lifted, we will need to continue some form of social distancing measures for the time being, including wearing masks. A well-attended ops session is a lot of fun with a lot of energy in the room. However, the health of club members and visitors is paramount. More discussions are needed to find a way to run an ops session at the club that is fun, but avoids crowding in the aisles, and minimizes health risks. Very likely this will include a remote engineer component, and we need to figure out how to make that fun and satisfying for everyone involved.

A great introduction to operations with DTC featuring Silicon Valley Lines. John from TSG Multimedia attended one of our sessions last year and put together this great episode of Model Railroading 101. Enjoy!

If you enjoy operating a railroad in a relaxed club atmosphere, come and join us at one of our future operating sessions.

When the COVID-19 Shelter-in-Place restrictions hit the SF Bay Area and pretty much everyone was required to stay home, we quickly realized that the club won’t be able to function as normal for a while. However, the club membership is still around, and we like to hang out with each other on Friday evenings working on the railroad.

So we moved to the next best thing: hanging out together online, while working on the railroad, and kept meeting regularly. In some weeks we have a presentation, a tour of a member’s home layout, or other pre-planned program. Other weeks are more laid back, and members talk about model railroad news, explore local railroad resources together, work on projects and share results as the meeting is going on, etc.

At one of these meetings we started discussing that it might be fun to do a remote operating session. Start of with something simple: Set up a train on a home layout, write out a switch list, the layout owner runs the train, but the online group is acting as conductor and directs the moves the engineer is supposed to make. We decided to try it first with Bernhard’s Welztalbahn railroad.

It turns out, this was a very enjoyable experience, not only for the engineer, but for the group, too. Of course, some friendly banter and joking contributed to the fun, too.

In fact, we had so much fun, that we did it again this week on Bill’s San Arbo railroad, which also was a big success.

We are planning to do more such sessions in the future.

Even though we can’t be at the club for now, we are having fun.

Together.