Last weekend, my wife and I were invited to leave The Cape and spend the weekend at Sheila and Jim's home in NH. They had been to our home several times when they were visiting The Cape. Jim had recently finished the track work on his basement layout and was now operating trains. Jim is very active in the Boston Metro Highrailers club who have a large O gauge layout but that has not stopped him from building one for his personal use. Upon entering his domain, you are first greeted by display shelf's on all walls that store his varied collection of motive power, passenger cars and rolling stock. It is better stocked than some hobby stores I have been in. His yard area takes up a portion of one room and leads to another room where the main layout is housed. That room is completely filled with bench work and track at different levels. Long runs of connected main line track cover for what is now somewhat barren table top that will become a pallet for scenery. Right away the 1 1/2 days of operating the layout began. Jim likes to run articulated steam engines, and large diesels followed by long consist. One of the many highlights was runny two MU'ed MTH DD40x's with a long freight and the assist of a diesel helper on the rear. All the trains we ran with only one exception, operated flawlessly. The next thing I knew it was time to break for a delicious supper and good conversation. Up early the next morning, I was the first one downstairs and about to go into the basement for my own little private look around when Jim came down and started to prepare breakfast. We then went and started to run the layout again switching out different motive power. He put an MTH turbo train on the tracks and began to run it along with another long freight train. At some point, the turbo train derailed. Checking out the cause, we found a curve section of track that was less than the 072 diameter needed for the turbo train to negotiate. I guess this was the first time Jim had the turbo running on the layout. We proceeded to dismantle the curve which was made up of Gargraves flex and replaced it with sections of Ross 080 track. At that point it was time for us to begin our trip back home. All the way my wife and I discussed the events of the weekend and agreed that we had a great time.
