Train Blog

ome folks in the club wanted this blogged, so here you are. It’s been a weird April 1st today. I played a couple of pranks today, one of them on the club (a freeway was coming through). I was pretty proud of myself – I find myself so very amusing. Worked at the club. Did a little scenery and a lot of club maintenance – trash goes out, filters swapped, vinegar down the drain, doodah, doodah. So now it’s getting late and time, perhaps to leave. First problem – we’ve got a short on the main across Bethlehem. For some […]

ot much to say on this one – I rolled everything out [sic] for loading, we had a good team at the show, everything went together… until it was time for the skirts. Which I’d forgotten. So we’re standing there, miles from the club, wondering what to do. The layout looks pretty good – we’re not the only one without skirting. Should someone drive 100 miles round trip to get the box I’d neglected (I’d ridden over, so I couldn’t volunteer for that job). Fetch them? Skip them? It was Bill Sterner who solves the problem (and made me laugh) […]

o big night for ops at the club. Rolled down the street and the lot was packed – always a good sign. Didn’t have to beg any jobs – all the locals, all the freights, and almost all the passengers ran. I ended up on the panel – that’s okay, I know how to deal with that. The railroad was just getting started and I was making my usual moves. Run 202 to Zanesville and duck him into a siding, with another warrant to carry him to Martin Yard once the Silver Bullet passed. My other move is to get […]

ood session today on John Wilke’s Louisville & Nashville railroad. A couple of the old sweats I’m familiar with across Florida got together with a fresh batch from elsewhere. The thing about the L&M is that you need to be up on your layout lore – this isn’t point-A-to-point-B stuff. Two mainlines tangle about each other through the southern Appalachians, crossing and recrossing. Some of them, the Southern RR dominates, some the L&N. This means the dispatchers need to trade off and work together to get things done. For me, I was on the quieter Southern panel. In this, it’s […]

think the wisdom of getting older comes from learning what not to do. You learn from mistakes, and tell yourself never to repeat them. Like today, when I’m talking to Ken (the host) before the running of his Florida East Coast, a neat railroad with all sorts of fun runs on it and a dispatcher panel that is second to none. The mistake? Robert (pontificating): “Well, Ken, I love running all jobs on a railroad, and I feel I’m good at all. No, if there is one job I don’t seek out, it’s working the yard.” Ken (smiling): “You’re on […]

t was a day today. Started at 7am, early at work, when I had to deal with the fallout of a backstabbing and kowtow to someone who lorded over me. Ugh. And when I went jogging at lunch, the fly button on my shorts popped off, leaving me to jog while holding my pants up. I mean, FerChristSakes, how bad could this day go? At the restaurant tonight, I had a bourbon. I’m just burned out. And it’s ops night. And I already knew a lot of my operators were out of town. Got in and found that it was […]

t was quite the night at club ops. We had a lot of people, always thankful of that. For once I wasn’t the dispatcher, just a local running to Zanesville and beyond to Carbon Hill. A good run – engines worked well and I knocked off the switchlist quite orderly. Stuff went where it was supposed to go and I made clean moves for it all. Only surprise – coming back to Zanesville from Carbon Hill – had clearance to work all tracks (since I needed to work Bolton Box, pull a bunch of outbounds off the head-in track for […]

he FEC. Great railroad. The only thing the host, Ken Farnham, could do to make it better is to change the benchwork height. See, Cocoa yard is at a great height to switch, but when it comes to using it for banging your head, it’s just a little too low. I have to lean in to crack myself in the skull, over and over, when I goof up. See, I was running 915, the train that leaves Cocoa and runs down to Buenaventura to do a lot of switching. It’s tricky, the usual balance of pulling stuff out and putting […]

eash. Can it be a crazier session? I’m trying to run the panel. Out in the main room, two of my crews are bellowing at each other like a pair of velociraptors in heat (about the Battle of Midway, I think). Of of the locals is solving his switching puzzle the way a computer would do it (trying every possible combination) while the other has been abandoned by its velociraptor engineer. We lost a switch machine early (wait, no we didn’t, wait, yes we did). And sometime during all this nuttiness, I’m supposed to be dispatching. Got the local chip […]

hen working a switching puzzle, there comes a tipping point when you go from moving cars this way and that (while holding your breath) to seeing the solution. I clearly remember that moment today while working the Rinker Plant in Eau Gallie. Now I’ve seen ever possible cheat on this, from people using the main as extended storage to people lifting a car from one track to another (sorry, Ken, but some people panic when they deadlock). I’ve done the job once before and the first time was a bit of a snarl. This time I had a better feel […]