rduous is a brainy word I had to look up for spelling since i don’t use it often. Used in an example: our ops session was arduous.

I took the Mingo Turn out first thing at midnight. Fortunately is was still an interchange-only run so outside of a shuffle or two, I had it done pretty quick (and I got to watch a cornfield meet right outside of my cab window). But I had a bad feeling as time passed and I finished my work – Zanesville is further up the line and the turn servicing it had not been past. Sure enough, I get back into Martin Yard and find the cut sitting there – nobody signed up.

So let’s see how the economy of this works – if you don’t run the turn, more cars are assigned to it, making it a bear in the next session. Members are, in a sense, duty-bound to a future operator who is facing the nightmare of an overloaded train next time around. But there was no interest in it so I ran it out. Luckily the stars (and waybills) were in alignment – there was no work on the second leg of the trip to Carbon Hill so I could skip it. Ended the night pushing an ore train over the summit, partially because he’d have never made it and also because we needed units over in Calypso.

But yes, I’ll mention that during my second turn of the night, deep in my switching moves, I got rather light-headed. At first I thought it might be the beer I’d had at dinner, or maybe a stroke. But no, it was a build up of carbon dioxide in the club house. Where was this dangerous outgassing coming from? Well, it was as if millions of voices cried out about Midway and were suddenly not silent.

And that’s all I’ll say about that.

Cody and Shaun did a great job on the shared panel and special thanks to to Frank and Cody (yeah, same guy) who picked up the last two drag freights. And Nick, he’s got the yard cold. It’s good to see a solid crew form up on the critical jobs.

Anyway, I had fun while head’s down in my towns, switching away. But yes, it was still a little bit arduous…

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