o of course my medical zoom meeting went long. I blew out of the house with 40 minutes til train time, traffic was a bitch, but I came into the lot with ten minutes to spare. And the parking lot was full.

Came in lugging my computer and called out hello and everyone gave me rousing hellos back. Given my last few weeks, this was a very nice glow to get. And the guys knew how to set up – the track was all clean, the jobs were signed up, and everyone was ready to go. I set the clocks and got the dispatcher program running. I hardly retook my seat and it was go time! Clock was hot!

Engineer Mathis storms out of the spiral tunnel, getting ready to cut Helper AJ (i.e. “Sonic”) off for the final time. (Photo: Jim M)

There isn’t much to say about the session other than how perfect it ran. Oh, we had glitches and mistakes, sure, but when you are running a railroad that big, with engines that small, with people with wildly different abilities, sure, you’ll have problems. But it wasn’t anything they couldn’t handle. I know of two places (specifically Red Rock and Zanesville) where crews “figured it out on the ground”, leaving me to move the colored blocks across the division. Most of the stuff ran (sadly, the last two freights did not, but we’re working on a special deal for them – to be announced on the next business meeting). There’s also talk of running a Wednesday ops session with TT&TO. It worked well on our Saturday Night Specials so maybe we’ll move it into the general crew.

But yes, all the locals got all the cars spotted, and the yard shuffled their stuff in an orderly fashion.

So next session, I’m going to double the freight cars dropping off – it’s too easy by far. Let’s dial it up.

Really, after all the stuff I’ve gone through for the last few weeks, it’s nice to settle into the normal of our abnormal operations!

>>BUY A BOOK. MAKE ME RICH!<<<

It’s busy at Zanesville with two locals working the same sidings and mainline traffic coming through! (Photo: John DV)