aybe I’m expecting too much from my hobby of operations? Don’t know. The last few haven’t been so hot. And for this session, it’s not the fault of the Farnhams (no, it falls pretty much on the operators but a bit on the weather, too) but the June run of the Florida East Coast was a tough session. How tough? Got home by 8pm and fell into bed to “read” and crashed for nine hours solid (would have been ten, but the cats demanded their due (i.e. food)).

So what went wrong? Well, we knew going in that the Market Street Crossover in Titusville was malfed, but that’s fine – I’m a good dispatcher (with the backing of the NMRA (for what that’s worth (I’ve seen some of the dispatchers they certify))). Figured it was part of the railroad game. But luckily I keep track of the double crossover out of the yard area – the primary turnout (the one that directs trains to either Palm Bay or Titusville) was inop – rising out of my chair for a look-touch, I realized that the throw rod must have dropped out – I could push it over by hand (well, by finger) and it would hold just well enough to let trains over. But that meant that any outbound train had to be routed literally manually. That means give me fifty sit-stands, soldier! Count off! One! Two! Three!

The crew was really short-handed. My wife couldn’t come because of family issues (needy, whining, leaching family issues) and so Bev was having to double-duty in the yard. And another operator cancelled at the literal last minute (good reason this time) but yes, the railroad was short handed. But what really killed us was that it seems that the crews forgot how to switch out cars. It was noticeable on the turns (trains that go somewhere and turn around, doing work at this point). By definition, you should only need to run your engines around the cut one time. Why crews were using my charity of local control to run around their trains over  and over baffles me. So that literally killed us – crews overstayed, meaning they were not available for later trains, so we were just grabbing any crews that did finish and putting them back onto the firing line. Ken plans this all out and he saw his crew planning go all to hell. Sorry about that but the trains were stacked in the yard and we had to run them out in FIFO fashion. No other choice

The other issue was trains not picking up in Cocoa (again). Two times ago, this crippled us. Last time, I started demanding car-counts before clearing out of Cocoa (to make sure trains had loaded up to keep the yard drained). So now everyone knew what to do, right? Nope. As soon as I let the policy slip (I was too busy doing the stand-sit-stand-sit program for tighter buns) then the crews began streamlining Cocoa again, resulting in the yard packing up. I keep telling myself that I should run an extra out to drag all the excess freight back to Hialeah but I didn’t.

My big fail for the night was the weed control train. Ken set up a special situation for a weeder he wanted to run – a sprayer set that was supposed to come out and work along the line. Well, we got it to its first stop, then its second, at which point the layout went to hell and Ken was having to do everyone’s thinking for them. I spotted a hole that I could have used to get the weeder up the line to Frontenac but we argued about that. He said he had a scheduled meet at Pinetta and could not move. I was thinking “But wait, you are an extra. What sort of scheduled meet does and extra have? He isn’t even ON the timetable”). But I didn’t push it and then things got out of control and now brambles and brush clog the north end of the division. My bad.

I’ll briefly mentioned the rain. We’ve been in the sheds for heavy rains. This time, we got three belts of it, just lightning and thunder and the roar of the deluge across the metal roofs (making it hard to talk to the crews in the other shed and, surprisingly, nobody crossed over during this weather for clarification). So, just another brick in the wall.

I’ll still say that with all that, I always have fun. Ken spends a lot of time getting ready for us. And with life nibbling at our ranks, it is harder to staff up for full sessions. I only hope everyone remembers that Ken is making tear-down-in-two-years rumblings so there are only a limited number of sessions left. Better get signed up; limited lifetime offer and all that.

But thanks to the Farnhams for hosting. It’s always one of my favorite lines to operate.

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p.s. Sorry, no session photos. The ONT crew was either in the admin shed or otherwise distracted.