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I’m sweating bullets and biting my nails right now – I’ve got Ops. I hate hosting. Once it gets going, its generally okay. But until then, I’m like an actor before going out on stage. I’m wired, tight to twanging. Problems I dealt with this weekend: A corroded wire (again!) the in Salinas panel. A Watsonville turnout that wouldn’t carry power. A steam engine that worked fine until I added the front coupler, and now its dogging. My new sound-equipped E8s are jacked a little high, putting their pilot couplers out of line. And the Salinas switch engine, which no […]

I have to smile when Everquack or World of Warplug folks brag about online squads who have been together for five, six months. My operations group has been together upwards of twenty-five years. I’ve got silent-service guys, ex-military pilots, software experts, a once-mayor, a veterinarian, former cops, linemen, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. I’ve gone to their weddings and funerals, loaned money, asked favors, exchanged Christmas cards and dirty jokes. As for train-running, we learned it together, from loop-counting to invitations to pro-rails, the superbowl of ops. Tonight it shows. People arrive on time, they dive in to clean our massive layout. […]

Short haul out of Points North down to Cocoa, where I’ll dump my four cars and shut down my unit. The main’s clogging – past the restrictions at Jay Jay’s, I find three freights holding at Titusville, watching their signals, eager to head home. Slip past that parade on the siding, then beg the dispatcher to give me a green, please! Finally get to Frontenac, where I’d pushed coal about a power plant early this night-session. There is a detector there. In reality, it would sniff up a passing train’s skirts, checking speed and hotboxes and such, then broadcast its […]

I love going to Dick’s ops. Its been down for a while, but its a handy little railroad with a casual session. Best thing is that its a mile or so from my house, an easy bike ride. Good group showed for the Grand Reopening. Took a job footplating in Cheyenne yard, cleaning up the paperwork and getting the crew rolling. But Don’s clever so I leave him to it, hooking a freight out of the yard, a flat run to Chicago. The layout’s live around me and I’m enjoying the nice scenery, passing trains and watching for open turnouts […]

You know you are a Model Railroader when… Look, I’m kitbashing up the bunker-like building between the CSX HQ and the Jacksonville terminal for the traveling layout. Gray, slablike, etc. Got lots of pictures outside (dull pictures because it’s a dull building). And then I looked on LiveSeachMaps to see what the roof looked like. The concrete slabwork, I can do. The AC boxes, I can buy. But there is a big circular skylight that had me stumped. I went through Colonial’s Walther’s catalog – nothing. Looked all over the house. Nothing. Looking at it again, I realized how much […]