o I thought it would be a breeze session. Zack and I were going to joint-dispatch (him west subdivision, me east). Seriously, I kinda felt that it was like two master pianists sharing the same bench, skillfully weaving a beautiful melody on a single piano.

In reality, it was like we were at the same piano, sharing the same bench, and it was rolled it out of the music hall and tipped down the long fight of steps and into the street. Crash, sprang, bong, bewang! Didn’t go so well.

Well, no, it went as well as it could. We ran THIRTY-SEVEN trains (and a furnace job). That’s everything, every single one on the signup sheet, plus a boatload of soup tickets (enough for a soup kitchen on Christmas Eve). Zach kicked out 78 warrants and I did 54. As you can see to the right, that’s my dispatcher sheet for the night, showing everything that ran between bound brook and the Red Rock division point. Quite impressive. Unless you were caught up in it, I guess (in the same way a tornado is impressive, especially when your roof lifts off).

So the soup tickets saved a lot of time – we didn’t get the usual backstory about what you wanted to do (but remember, in future, that the ticket only gets you to the end of the railroad. If you want to lap, you need another ticket). No tickee, no extra-y. And the interlocking literally saved my ass a couple of times. Luke was sick so Kyle reported back to the high tower and really did a great job. I could pretty much get trains into the plant and “let Kyle handle it”. At one point, Harris Glen was packing up, a crisis was in the works, and Zack was pumping trains through Red Rock. But moments ago, I’d cleared two trains from Calypso to Harris. Got Kyle on the line and told them to red-board them in Lehigh. So even though they both had warrants, we could hold them in railroad fashion. And that saved my bacon. So thanks to BETH for having my back. Even more impressive, he did it with the lever-version. Wow.

I’ll say this – I’ve dealt with Harris on one-DS nights, and even paired up. I’ve never faced the volume of trains we had in the session. I was looking at my sheet and just trying to spot moves I could make, even bunny-hops. At one point, I thought we were done. I know that Zach as struggling with a couple of non-reporting trains, the approaches to division were packed, the glen was a nightmare. Every warrant I wrote at that point made me wonder, “I wonder if this is the warrant that gets someone killed”. At one point, the entire Dispatchocopter Air Wing was airborne, armed and ready to carpet-bomb. I remember looking at my loaded sheet and thinking that we’d finally locked the railroad up, that we’d earned the humiliation of having to back trains off the hill and get things sorted (Zach knows the SP&S story I’ve told him, about a deadlocked TT&TO railroad in real life). Just shook my head and managed to move one train from Harris to Red Rock. Suddenly a couple more trains freed up. And Zach was getting his problems solved – nothing showed up at Division so I kept pumping them downhill, bailing out my subdivision. So we weren’t going to die. And younger members wouldn’t be telling newbies about the time the railroad shut down. Heck, even Pete stopped running laps, which gave us a break.

Funny thing – almost all the soup tickets came to my desk. I think only one went to Zach. He was struggling with  our joint logjam and I slid it over to his desk. He half-shouted “Duck!”. I don’t know why. Maybe I misheard?

So, in saying this, it was still epic, the same way a a disaster you’ve survived is epic. If gives you a good story to tell other model railroaders when swapping stories, the day the LM&O ran at total capacity. You’re welcome.

The good things I’ll say about the crews – everyone has learned to be patient over the last year or two. I can’t speak for Zach if he got lip over the line, but I know that people stood in the eastside line and got their warrants (maybe I’ll go Fandango, and allow you all to purchase warrants online).

Also, I’m pretty sure that there was a lot of assistance going on there (looking at our club hippy on that one) (see my comic below). Nobody lost their poop. Again, that session last night could have gone very, very badly – it was the operators (not the dispatchers) who got us through.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And, okaaaay, now for the bad news. The operators need to keep improving. Turnouts not getting set right was a big one, and especially big was the number of people who did not call clear off the main. Want proof? The top line of the train sheet to the upper right is the “Time off duty” line – that marks the time the train completed. Some of them have times. But if you see the ones marked “Done”, that was me asking Zach, Calypso, and BETH for confirmation that a train was complete. I know Zach had his own stories of  trains not reporting clear. I could hear the cursing.

The real problem are you guys who show up unprepared. Look, I know throttles are expensive, locomotives are pricey, all those things. Remember that you are members of a model railroad club. We expect that after several months of membership and ops, you should have a basic knowledge of ops. Additionally, you should have the basic requirements (and I do mean throttles). Engines we might be able to provide, but really, you should have your own set to run. I run with two Southern Pacific GP-9s. I don’t need a roster of engines to lug into the club (Zeus does. I don’t). I bring my throttle and engines and am totally prepared to sit on my can and write paper all night. Oh well.

Also, please remain mindful of our radio procedures. Don’t be playful, indirect or verbose. Call for a warrant, ask for specific requirements, write it down, read it back, hang up. The six guys on the other phones will thank you. And if one more engineer comes back to the eastside desk and asks for a warrant without a pencil, I’ll give you one, right though your undead heart. Three times that happened.

Please, if we have movement levels like this, we need more crews to learn more skills. If you make a mistake, don’t look for it in the blog – remember it and don’t repeat it. Re-align your turnouts. Check your turnouts before running over them. Double-check your warrants and follow them to the letter. If you are between runs, stand near someone working a local switching job and observe how it is done. If you have questions, quietly ask them (but do not yack about your new engines, your grandkids, politics, medical issues, local news, or other blah-blahs). Learn new jobs. And yes, we do know that the instruction book is well out of date. I’m going to try to get that corrected (Zach, stop changing things!).

Normally I head home after a session and maybe unwind with a book or Netflix. This time, I went out with the young guys and had a potent beer and a greasy cheeseburger. Happy to be alive, I guess.

But good session because of all those who came out.

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