George Wellington's Indoor Large Scale Layout

 Pat & Fred Visit George's Layout Along With Ben

Pat has kindly sent along these wonderful images from a trip he took with Fred the other day to run trains at George's place where he has a large indoor layout that is operations intensive.

Most of the captions will be from Pat's e-mail to me.

Mike,  I have assembled some of the pictures I took of the rail ops sessions at George Wellington's. 

We see George looking on in the distance.

I checked out the ops session on my own on November 28, 2021. 

It was my second time visiting George's but my first time operating his layout. 

The following week, December 5th, 2021 I brought Fred Mills with me.

 We made it a regular outing for the following two weeks, December 12th and 19th.   Then we broke for a Christmas break!

The location names on the layout are Carleton Place and Almonte Stations, Bennett Meats, Almonte Dairy, Findlay Foundry, Central Canada Machine Works, Balderson Cheese, Mississippi Cement, Ashton Feed & Grain, ABL Salvage, Dominion Coal and Lumber and the Express Warehouse beside the Almonte station.

I worked every time on the Almonte side of things under the tutelage of Len Bernicky.  Every once in a while, George would yell something at us to keep us in line. Big grin!

There are two main areas on the layout - Carleton Place and Almonte. 

A series of east bound and west bound trains are built with car cards as the way to determine where cars are destined.

Here's Len running his beloved CP diesel unit. 

Rules to follow include never having more than 5 cars per train, ensuring the fruit car gets to Almonte station before any other car is shunted in Almonte, and have a good time! 

George has said that any member of the OVGRS is welcome to come out and operate on Sunday mornings.

Like other Garden railways I've operated (only a few so far: Fred's IPP&W and the RP&M, Jim Davis' in Kemptville and one in Jasper, Alberta. Pics of the latter will be shared one day), it's a very relaxed and friendly atmosphere. You have to keep your mind on the next moves of course.

 Trains start running at 9:30 and we end at noon. 

Len is getting ready to set out a car at the siding in the corner.

Here are the pics that I preferred. I can share the videos at a later time, when I load them onto my YouTube channel. 

I enjoy running my 'Annie' alongside Len's CP diesel as you will see in some of the pics.

Thanks so much, Pat, for these fine looking images of a great indoor setup!

Looks like a ton of switching opportunities going on there!

I like the look of George's car card system.

A smiling Len!

And...a smiling Fred!

A dynamic duo!

Fred follows the action intently!

Len is intent on his switching moves.

A lovely bridge scene.

We end with a pic of Len's and Pat's locomotives from two distinct eras! 

Thanks so much, again, Pat for sharing these wonderful images and stories with the gang.

  

Perhaps in the new year a few of us could carpool out to George's for a Sunday morning visit!

All the best, Mike Hamer, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada