I usually start my ops day dreading it. It’s just my personality – worry worry worry. Had two visitors coming in and was hoping we’d have some sort of decent session. This would make up for the fact that Omar (a work-buddy) had been thinking of coming out but couldn’t make it.

Anyway, met our visitors over at the Olive Garden and everything went fine. Drove over to the club and the lot was almost empty – three cars. My worrying was justified it seemed.

So we started to clean and people poured in. We even got a few guys we hadn’t seen for a while, which was great. Ended up with a mob, with everyone cleaning tracks and sorting things out. Even Omar made it. Once things looked clear, I took my seat back in the DS office and called the clock hot and we were off.

It was a night the sort I haven’t seen in a while. Every freight ran. Half the passengers ran. And extras? We ran three coal trains, an autorack, a TOFC. At one point, I had Pittsburgh stacked with four trains in the foldback loop. The helper crew was up and down the hill all night, pulling and pushing. The session ran long – 3-1/2 hours. Eighty seven warrants, which we think might be a record for us.

And the layout, I realized, is looking good (thanks to Bill and Richard and their crews for that). And running? For all the terrible things you can say about JW, he does know how to manage a maintenance department. The layout ran very smoothly.

I even passed the seat to Bob half way through, ran conductor for Omar on his TOFC and then took out a coal train on my own, running the entire line. Just a fun run.

Every so often, you have a session that brings pride of effort and organizational fellowship into conjunction. This was one of those session. I just really had a good time – I’m going to float for days off this one.

Thanks guys – great run!

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