Saturday, November 26, 2016

Fremo AmericaN meeting in Bremen Germany

Recently I went to the Fremo AmericaN meeting in the northern German city of Bremen. The trip took some doing as both halves of the train trip resulted in delays. A signalbox failure in Deventer in the Netherlands on the outbound trip meant my planned route had to be changed. On the return trip there were engineering works in the Netherlands on my route and I had to take a replacement bus. As luck wouyld have it, the one on my route was a local bus stopping at all stations and on the other route it was a fast bus. Oh well.
Luckily both NS and DB were very helpful and no additional costs were incurred. Only time delays and they were compensated by new train routes I travelled.

This meeting was the first time we tried out timetable and trainorder operation. While we had some problems I feel we can overcome them with more familiarity with the procedures. It helps of course when yours truly pays attention to the switching and makes it efficient. Oh well, live and learn, right? I had great hopes for this type of operation which is a bit difficult to do on ever changing modular setups. I was pleasantly surprised by the easy with which everyone adapted to it. Normally we use track warrant control or no dispatcher in our meetings. 

See here for the report, here for a plan of the modular layout and here for Hagen Langbartel's picsYou can even see me in some of the pictures...

Thanks to all who made it possible to have a great time despite coming down with the flu.