Train Blog
September 26, 2012
Well, the last couple of weeks have been club-tuf. We got our mower stolen. I got pulled off the sectional layout to work on the permanent, but neither is where I wanted them to be. A show is coming up. Got two out-of-state ops-trips to arrange. Work work work. I was pretty ground out from all this. Just tired. Came out for ops not knowing what to expect but, frankly, expecting the worse. Then again, I always anticipate the worst. That way, you’re never disappointed. But tonight, I was pleasantly surprised. I had fun at the club. Fun. Imagine that. […]
October 6, 2012
We took our space-age sectional layout to this weekend’s Deland show. Lots of fun, especially following a really easy setup (six guys, one hour of casual effort). Had some problems – what show wouldn’t have problems? After all, we’re moving a complex assemblage forty miles and putting it together in a strange place, to run tiny trains with all sorts of electronics. So first we had problems with the taillights of the truck the night before (I went over to Bob’s early this morning to follow him and act as taillights). Then one of the new digitrax cables were pinched, […]
October 15, 2012
I’m out of Johnstown, moving through the Pennsylvanian morning in an RS unit for the Stenzel Valley local. I’ve got Mike as my brakeman, a friendly guy who showed me around the layout earlier. Since the J&G has run precisely one time before (it’s new), we’re not sure how the run is going to come out. Sometimes new procedures turn out to be overly difficult, even impossible, requiring new methodologies. So now we’re at the Stenzel cuttoff, with Mike dropping from the caboose to realign the turnout behind us to the main while I call clear to the dispatcher. And […]
October 16, 2012
The Saint Louis Gateway is an odd railroad simulation. There isn’t that usual balance of yard/locals/freights (with passengers tossed in because we have to). This one is about high speed, high volume running. Several staging yards point at the SH Junction like a Polish firing squad. And when the session starts, a half-dozen trains leap into motion. And that’s the deal – it all comes down to that one signal tower keeping things moving smoothly. Outside of one working yard and a couple of big grain silos, it’s mostly long trains highballing across the prairie. To really enjoy it, the […]
October 17, 2012
Why is this man smiling? He was at the controls of a single GP-9 picking up cars out of LA. Railroad management overestimated the pulling power of these new fangled diesels. Now, with 24 cars, he’s found himself spinning his wheels on the grade out of Oxnard. This caused him to have to run his train up in two sections (and deal with a Butt Monkey operator opposing him at Ventura). Once he got rebuilt on the Ventura siding (in the sun…. shine) and departed, he found the slow rise towards Santa Barbara too much for his straining single unit. […]