o I’m sitting in my office in the back of Bank Tower, writing out train orders. It was just after 7am and the Bristol Local was calling for paper out. I wrote him a simple “Run Extra” order. Then I got the call from the station operator at Waterbury that he’d departed (i.e. I peeked over there).

Okay, so sure. Grinchy grin on my face, darkness in my heart, all that. He got about a mile down the tracks and met (cowcatcher to cowcatcher) the first westbound passenger train of the day. So, emergency stopping or smoldering bodies scattered down the embankment – either way it was a head-on, and Kyle was most displeased at that set up.

Gave me something to get into the blog. This is why railroad companies do not staff dispatcher offices with newspaper reporters, I guess.

The “correct” way of looking at it was that Kyle should have checked the “standard clock” (a hand-nudged clock that moves in fits and starts) and the timetable (up on the wall, with shiny tape making it tough to read). I can’t speak for his reasons but, bottom-line, TT&TO is about checking your time and timetable for oncoming trains.

Admittedly it was a dick move. I’ll agree to that. But if we’re going to keep trying TT&TO on the Highland, we need to get better at reading our orders, our timetables and our pocket-watches.

The resurrected local see’s to his duties, with me calling out inbounds (Photo: Kyle S)

In the debrief, a number of good suggestions were made – an actual fast clock (and since we run four hours of train time in about two-three hours of real time, I’d figure 2:1 would be a good start). Also, yeah, wall timetables are as tough to read as airport gate monitors – giving everyone a timetable to carry with them adds to the urgency of taking charge of your train and looking ahead. And a “real” clock and not a “robert” clock adds a uniformity to time. Both of these are big takeaways.

The same is true of locals working down and across the mains, both at the Bank-to-Waterbury stretch as well as Plainville and Bristol. I was calling out oncoming trains (which gets tedious to me – I’m not a shepherd). The smaller depots can work around the traffic (generally one to two trains an hour) and the multi-tracks west are probably yard limits, meaning all engines need to scuttle out of the way of first class trains, and all second-class and lower trains need to come in slow, praying to the god of Adequate Stopping Distance.

The atomic clock, only because it’s made out of atoms.

As for my own, personal debrief, I didn’t see the need to record packets issued (though I could have). Since most of my workspace has toggles on it, I need to bring in a clipboard to keep station copies. Yeah, asking everyone what their trains were (repeatedly) was hardly professional. A clipboard (and using the registers Rob provided and I rejected) will help.

At 2:1 ratio, that will give us a chance to start at 6:00am and get full engine checks and moronic questions out of the way before things start heating up.

Personally, it was a pleasure to meet Mike, who is one of those OpsSig guys – God knows what he thought of our flying circus. We’ve had better days. Well, if he comes back, maybe we can show him an “improved” Highland.

Or at least some really spectacular wrecks!

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