o this is supposed to be a blog about an op session. But I need to mention what happened before…

TravelToOpsLog – After brunch with the wife at the local coffee shop, I hit the road at 11:30 am, heading to Jack F’s Yosemite Valley Railroad. I’d meet another member there for a small three-man session. I’ve run it before and it’s lots of fun.

So before leaving the parking lot, I put in my earbuds (please disregard, any FHP-readers), fired up my audible player and hit the road. I was just settling into the story and picking up speed on the 408 when I noticed a weird warning light on the dash. It looked like the Illuminati pyramid with a curving arrow surrounding it. Pulled onto the breakdown lane and checked the manual. It said something like – “Electrical failure. Your journey has ended.” What is this? Lord of the Rings? Da fug?

So I did what all programmers do – I turned the car off and back on again. Problem cleared. Keeping one eye on the light, I gingerly got back into traffic and went easy for a bit. Finally got to the 417 and just as I swung onto that, my cheap sunglasses they gave me following my recent eye surgery lurched and dropped. Half of the right earpiece cracked completely in half. I tried to prop it up but it was digging into my head and so I tossed them to the floor mat. So fine – I’d have about an hour of glaring driving in front of me. What else could go wrong? Settled into the story and the run and made it with thirty minutes to go.

Pulled into a shady park and tried to turn off Audible. Yes, I turned it off, but other than the story I was listening to, I couldn’t access any of the other books I’d downloaded. I didn’t know what this was about – called the friend who is a big Audible fan and he didn’t know either. Looks like, as long as you have wifi access (he always does) you can change books. Without it, you really can’t. Verified this when I got to Jack’s, borrowed a cup of wifi and had no problem accessing my other stories. Hmm. That’s something I’ll keep in mind in my coming trip.

So we sat around and waited for our third guy to show. Chatted a bit until Jack realized it was 20 after go-time. Called the guy and got his answering machine. Strange. So it seemed there would only be two of us – this happened once before, with a recently-deceased ex-member. Jack and I could handle it. So now it was train-time!

We now resume out OpsLog piece, already in progress…

Standing by in El Portal, listening for the announciator bell

Anyway, Jack brought heavy freight 101 down from Merced to the yard I was running, El Portal. I knew he was going to run the Merced Falls local so I made an effort to classify it first, getting it out of the yard so he could get things done. Meanwhile I got the other two trains sorted and took Yosemite Valley local out.

Okay, while the other two locals are jolly fun, Yosemite Valley is a bit of a puzzler. Amazing that with only five industries, you can really get stumped easy on this. I drilled through it, making the occasional mistake but getting things put away. High Sierra Oil is always a pain – I was handling six tankers for that. And Village Produce is a three-bay switch-back nightmare of an industry.

The Valley. This thing has fewer industries than Tuscarora but twice as many cars. Busy place.

By now, Jack had brought in his local and was off to the nasty switch place whose name escapes me. Rock gons one way (with an ass-pain loader you need to put on the leading end) and TOFCs behind you. By the time he was done, I was back in El Portal with my light engine stashed and the heavy road engines ready to run the entire freight back to Merced. By the time Jack had returned (pretty quickly) I was building 102 and took it out past the limit signs, following the tourist train. We figured out that heavy job had a new record of cars – twenty-seven. Anyway, good run. And now it’s time for…

Building 102 and waiting for Jack.

AfterOpsLog – So our missing man had never showed up. We called him again and got his mailbox. Concerned, we called the local PDs, both for a wellness check and to maybe get them off the highway so I could listen to my Audible book in peace. I was half-way home when I got a call from Jack. The cops reported that as they got to the address, our man had pulled in from running errands. He’d clean forgotten the session.

Like, well, shit.

So I stopped at a Walgreens on the way home and got another pair of sunglasses. My new eyeballs were about burned out from looking into the lowering sun.

Anyway, thanks to Jack for a fun session with hours of train handling. Had a great time!

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All photographs by the author

102 into Merced. Pulling through that long S turn stalled my engines just short of the crew change point. I’ll walk.