ith the withdraw of Covid and the resumption of the economy, our train club membership is booming. Our ops are packed now and there is a certain level of stress to be found in the tight aisle spaces and the large number of newbie operators unable to follow simple warranted instructions (and, of course, leaving turnouts open – it’s like sweeping for mines). But then there are the potential new members that are less than desirable.

I’ll keep this purposefully vague. We had a couple tells us they were willing to join, along with their young child. That’s great – family memberships are a nice income for the club and we always like advancing the hobby into the next generation.

However, this family had problems. First, their hygiene was terrible. The first time they came out and stood around watching ops, as soon as they left, members rushed to the back room for the air freshener spray. As a dispatcher, I was always in the other room and a voice of compassion – hey, possibly would could speak to them about it and all that other come-together bullshit. But then one session one of them came into the office and stood behind me and I felt my gouge rise. It was awful, to the point my eyes teared.

Second, their kid was out of control, running up and down the aisles and just wanting to run trains regardless of the fact that we were hosting ops. She just wanted to free-style it, even though our single-track main sees up to thirty trains running in a session (I’ve packed six trains into a single long siding before). I can’t afford to have engines running dark out there. And hey, if you are going to run on ops night, you run ops. I don’t see a Christmas tree in the middle of the room. Respect our session. And the high-pitched screaming, that was annoying.

I’d already heard down the railroad grapevine that another local club had booted them for the above reasons. Okay, that was already eroding my lets-work-things-out position.

But then they stole from us.

One of them had admitted a passion for a certain road. That’s fine – we all pick favorites. And one busy week, we had back to back sessions (a Saturday night evening session followed four days later by the monthly). Part of Saturday’s session was that we turn off the room lights for early AM and late PM hours, since the layout is lit and it looks cool. Since there are fewer people then, we can make it work.

So two days later, I was at the club and started carding for our upcoming usual session and I noticed a strange thing. In one industrial siding, I was missing a blue covered hopper. It was just gone. Figuring that the crew might have mistakenly picked it up and taken it to the yard, I checked there. Nope. Gone.

So I moved on to work the next industrial siding. At a paper mill, I found a strange thing – a covered hopper sitting on that spur (why would it be there – we don’t move covered hoppers to paper mills). Further, we were missing a boxcar.Then something clicked. I carried the extra covered hopper to the first industrial area and sure enough, it was the missing car. But there was no way a car could, in one session, get from one industrial area to another. All locals head out early, so it couldn’t hop from one local to another.

By then, the other member of the ops group showed up and together we tore the layout apart, searching for that missing boxcar. Not to be found, not on any part of the layout, not tipped over in tunnels, not in the bad order box. Gone.

Then, talking to a friend, I heard of our smelly friend’s interest in the same road as the missing boxcar. And both the covered hopper and the boxcar were blue.

Because of some thefts we faced a few years back, we have full cameras installed. Thus we of the ops committee sat down and watched the cameras over the course of the session. Sure enough, both the blue covered hopper and the blue box car were both spotted correctly early in the session. We even have a photo taken by a member showing the blue box car correctly spotted at the paper mill. But then, at 6pm session-time, our suspect idles over to the blue hopper and fiddles with it where it sits, picking it up off the rails and then rerailing it, possibly practicing. Shortly afterwards, the lights are snapped off (the room is dim but the cameras are still pretty clear). Soon as the lights are off, the suspect slips back over to the covered hopper so recently fingered and picks it up, carrying it low against his side as he idles around to the second industrial area. Nobody is there since all switching is done. He slides up and swaps the car, possibly thinking that we’ll shrug it off – Hey, it’s a blue car. A blue car is supposed to be there, right? Then he swings out of that area, neatly pocketing the car.

And watching that, my work-it-out-isms vanished. Smelly, loud thieves. The gypsies had to go.

The next time they came, the club president and I asked him to step out and told him he and his family were not welcome. Oh, we were gracious and all, saying that there were complaints by the membership about various things. He didn’t even ask what those complaints were, or even looked surprised. But I could see it in his eye – he knew.

Of course, these days you can’t be too careful. These people were terrible enough to steal from people who expressed open hospitality (even while pinching their noses). I live in the city of the Pulse shooting. Worshipers in churches get shot. I’d had a word and had some members certified to carry on alert, just in case he went out to his car and came back with blood in his eye and a weapon in his hand. we would have cross-fired his ass. But no, they left and we’ve hopefully seen the last of them.

Strange times these are. I just like to run trains, not have difficult conversations with rancid people over horrendous behavior problems. And the blue boxcar? We can replace it easy enough.

Some people. Horrible.

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