t was one of those days…

I walk into the session’s crew lounge, the only guy who forgot to wear his new FEC shirt (embroidered!). Everyone else was blue and snazzy. I had an old Daylight shirt on.

Strike one!

At the panel, the clock is hot. The first train is rolling for Titusville. I checked, double checked, even gave the train a rollby. I was certain I had it routed right out of the yard. Yet it ended up in Palm Bay, not Titusville. Had to back him all the way to the yard and come out the right way. I still don’t understand how I did this.

Strike two!

I’m in danger of getting heaved off the railroad now. But I’m happy to report I ran hot after that. I even had two trains lined up for a meet in Frontenac. Now this is a short siding, so tight you might have a car length left over. As the trains approached, I set the exit signals (the ones behind them) correct for the outbound trains. As they simultaneously cleared their entry turnouts, I tossed them both (a nifty two-handed panel move) and threw the signals too. The trains moved past on a slow roll, as close to a flying meet as you can get. One of the engineers even called to complement me. Yeah, looks like I’m still in this game.

We just won’t talk about Bob Martin’s dead-on-the-main local, Art’s long, long siding delay, and the occasional panel resets I had to do when I misrounted. We’ll keep this between you and me, and all our readers. Which is pretty much you and me.

Mums da woid.

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p.s. Happy Retyrement, Ken!