ears back in the 60s, there was a term on everyone’s lips (there were no feeds then) – “Generation Gap”.

As it was, until the 50s, kids and teenagers were seen as simply “young adults”. They wore the same clothing, cut their hair the same, and the only men (and no women) with tattoos were in in the Merchant Marine.

But then the 50s came, and you had “Rebel without a cause”. Teens started thinking about riding motorcycles, greasing up their hair, and not asking for their parent’s permission (By God!). Then the 60s came and the Gap was now there for all to see. Anti-war riots, bellbottoms, Summer of Love, hippies, Woodstock, drugs, sex and rock and roll. Don’t trust anyone over thirty. Suddenly teens were considered a different tribe. They were marketed to, commercialized and recognized.

The Generation Gap (including the term) have faded now. But thinking about last night’s session, I could kinda see the errors in the eras. Now this is a broad brush, meant to anger everyone (I have a passive-aggressive blog to live up to), but it comes down to this – the young gang tend to be distracted. The older guys are often challenged.

Everyone angry now? Good! Let’s site examples…

Young operator goofs:

• Coming to a session with no engines, throttles, signed-up position, and usually just past 7pm.
• While running between two stations, misplacing the train’s waybills. It’s fifteen feet, and they are gone? The Superintendent, the Calypso Yardmaster, the West Dispatcher and even the Sun God scrambled around looking for them. Turns out they were dropped, picked up, put in a pocket and then the jacket was tossed somewhere. What an odyssey. It was like one of those Incredible Journey things, with two dogs and a smarmy cat trekking after their owners. And just about as silly.
• 

  Oldtimer Nick returns to his old neighborhood in the seat of 414 (John DV)

  Focusing on running long, long, overlong trains. Flashy, yes. Impossible to pass, pretty-much.

• My favorite topic. We had a train that went to ground and the dispatchers gave me the keys for the dispatchocopter to look for it. Hadn’t moved. Operator was on his phone, rather out of phase with the session. As an angry Sun God, I sent him on his way. Two sidings along, at the critical Red Rock Division Point, he was dead as a rock, the entire railroad plugged, phone out again. I just pulled out my script, read it again, and gave him a nudging kick in the butt to get him on his way.
• Lack of problem solving came up. A young engineer found an inoperable Red Rock turnout and called out the guard. The Sun God shown his holy penlight on the turnout while the superintendent burrowed underneath. Then we realized he’d tossed the Mingo siding toggles, not the Red Rock ones.
• Situational awareness – I did see some abandoned tail ends left behind. Good thing those FREDs serve as air-sea rescue strobes.
• Not fully reading and committing warrants to memory – had a train read back his checkbox eight instructions and vault out onto the line, colliding with another train. And this leads to…

Old guy faults:

• In the above-mentioned collision, the old guy pried his way out of his crushed cab, snatched up the young guy’s warrant and read it back to him, firmly and slowly, a true curmudgeon. Watched Dispatcher Steve make a similar point with a young crew later.
• And there was sneering, too, a real curmudgeon trait. I knocked out Shelfton in just over six hours and gloated at the young guy who’d struggled with it last time. Dick move.
• Setting an engine on the track and not realizing that the nearby booster was now clicking away. Five minutes to clock hot and staging is dead. After checking the obvious, we lifted the engine and the clicking stopped. Replaced it and it started. It’s dead, Jim.
• Not clearing your route (and not realigning behind your moves) – lot of old guys ran turnouts. Sometimes (especially at night) you need to check the points via penlight (you brought one, right?). One guy was ready to storm back and write an MOW ticket for a turnout before it was pointed out to him. It’s good practice as you enter a peninsula to shoot a glance at the glance at the panels. You might save yourself some rerailing time.
• 

  Red Rock. A popular place to look at the next train’s caboose (John DV)

  And when you do go on the ground, please don’t attempt to rerail your engines on turnouts. I think the mid-session system flutter that knocked the clock out and saw many trains running away was caused by a crew (possibly two) rerailing on a ladder. Saw that several times. Please, rerail in the clear and push back.

• And writing snarky, passive-aggressive blogs. That’s a real old guy thing. Love it.

If anyone’s still reading at this point, I’ll note that the dispatcher team, while dealing with many issues (see everything above) introduced their own problems by not working out solid hand-off procedures. The only way the interlocking worked as well as it did the session prior is that Kyle and I discussed it to death. Last night, east and west saw all the twains meeting (little literary joke) at Red Rock. I’ll note (in smarty-pants tones that make this blog what it is (annoying, I think)) that when Mathew and I DSed together, we agreed that only one train could be brought into Red Rock, and a second one IF the other dispatcher agreed (because two trains (especially a certain Army train) are likely to foul). What did we have up there at one point? Four? Maybe five? Regardless, the DS team did a solid job (given the knuckheads we were crewing with), collectively writing 114 warrants. The yards handled the rush just fine – no delays for me getting trains in and out. And the superintendent? Outside of pocketing waybills and diving under the layout (to hide) at the first sign of trouble, his services were well-received.

Overall, and I know I claim this often, last night seemed to be the greatest number of people (and guests) we’ve ever had. Outside of the interwobbles, I believe everything ran. I got to run Shelfton (which was fun once I found the brake under Kaden’s litter) and eastbound 452 (loaded ore) which ran perfect, so thanks to the rolling stock committee for getting these fully in service, and even picked up Fast 298 from Alex while he labored up in Nazareth. Spotlight for the evening goes to Shemp who ran amok in the Steel Mill, running all three furnaces, bringing most of the materials in and the MTs out, stoking the fires and dumping the ashes. I don’t think anyone’s done a clean sweep before. I’m impressed.

The ops committee will be discussing making “night” a permanent feature of our sessions. I don’t think it gets in the way if you have a penlight. I’ll say that Pete’s dome cars looked extra-sexy lit up like that, and 298 ran so sweet through the moonlit hills of Zanesville and Carbon Hill. I’ll probably get a yes/no research vote in the next meeting before making any unpopular decisions. My observation – nobody bellowed “TURN THE G*D D**N LIGHTS ON!” so it seems favorable. The Sun God hath spoken. Bow before the Sun God.

I did have to reflect that we started trying club ops in 1990 with maybe four or five guys. You look at it now and realize that this is most likely the largest monthly session in the Southeast, if not the nation. And it only works because we have skilled, patent and committed operators, young and old, who push their trains through whatever difficulties they face (including checkbox eight violations). It was crazy-perfect last night, one for the books.

>>>BUY ONE OF THE OLD GUY’S BOOKS. MAYBE THAT WILL MAKE HIM HAPPY<<<