Ryan operates GNRR GP10 locomotive #7562 with the ProtoThrottle for the Marble Hill Turn job.
Happy New Year to all my friends and subscribers.
During the Christmas holidays our oldest son Ryan came home for the week. While he was here we were able to have a “mini” ops session on my layout. Ryan always has shown an interest in trains, but is not a model railroader and is more engrossed in cars, especially Ford Mustangs. I showed him the new ProtoThrottle and he was very impressed. Ryan is a “tech” guy and could appreciate the programming work and how configurable the throttle is. I took the throttle apart to install new batteries and he was amazed with the quality of construction of the throttle. I gave him a brief overview of how the ProtoThrottle worked and we began the ops session with him as the engineer of the Marble Hill Turn job. When Ryan was younger and I belonged to a modular model railroad club in Miami, he attended ops sessions with me and the other guys in the club were very impressed with how good of an operator he was even though he was “just a teenager”. Ryan took immediately to the ProtoThrottle and was operating it like a pro in just a few minutes. The most difficult part was figuring out the complicated switching moves required in the Marble Hill area. I had him plan out the moves and he quickly realized that he had to think several moves ahead to get the cars in the right order. Overall it was a very enjoyable ops session and Ryan did an excellent job operating the throttle.
While Ryan was here I took the opportunity to make some upgrades to my website and add some new photos for my Georgia Northeastern model railroad which can be found under the Layout tab. Ryan is very skilled at website design and currently works for a website company. The development, configuration, and execution of my website was completely implemented by him. Ryan has made it very easy for a "tech challenged" person like me to post updates and work on my website without his help. In addition, he has developed a few apps for the I-Phone and those can be found on his website at www.rmkapps.com. Ryan is also available to design websites for others and those interested can contact him through his website.
I wish everyone good health and much happiness in the coming year. I have lots of interesting project planned for the coming year so check back for updates.