November 3, 2013 Sunday Public Run Day Report

The weather was absolutely perfect, approximately 70 degrees with a nice breeze from the West. The sun was out and it was clear as a bell.

The run day started at 11AM with Phil and Andy Z raising the flag on the stations flagpole. We started out very shorthanded as we were missing many members due to other events. Kelly Smith and his son Jeff were the first ones out with Kelly's GP locomotive pulling about 9 cars. Next out was Tim on his RMI Forney, the Jillie Belle, pulling 9 large RMI cars With Bob Diaz as his conductor.

At the time, all of the club's locomotives were down for repair so Tom brought out his Southern Pacific GP locomotive with a bunch of the club cars. This worked out fine until Tom's locomotive had some problems and started oiling the tracks with hydraulic fluid. This made for some very interesting running up the grades as Tim and Kelly tried to pull their very long and heavily loaded trains up the grade into the station. A lot of slippage until we cleaned and sanded the track. Tom put his engine away to be fixed at a later date.

The 777 tried a run up the Crenshaw line but died just past the gate so it backed down and we transferred the passengers to Kelly's train when it came back into the station.  Needless to say it was an interesting day.  With only 2 operational trains we were still able to pull 1600 passengers during the 4 hour period running only the internal track. Crenshaw was closed for the day.

We now have pink, blue and green T shirts in assorted sizes in the club store so sales were brisk. While not really hot outside, the lemonade stand did alright as well.

Daisy prepared another fabulous lunch for all of us consisting of BBQ pork roast with a pineapple habanera pepper glaze, along with steamed baby carrots and spice encrusted baked potatoes. For desert we had home made Red Velvet cake and a nice apple coffee cake along with spiced pumpkin iced coffee, fruit punch and super sour lemonade. Everything was perfect and not a lot was left over. Daisy pulled off another great train crew meal.

We had 2 guests that were the lucky silent auction winners from the Torrance Cultural Arts dinner. They had a great time riding the trains and joining us for lunch.

Phil ran the station and Joanne ran the depot store with help from Roberta in both places. Loni, Dave and Wyatt also helped run the station later in the afternoon.

For being short handed, all went very smooth, even with the mechanical problems. Everyone was happy and it was a very relaxing day.  Come visit us again on Saturday, November 23rd at 12PM for our next public run.