You might have remembered my story about having my leg ripped clean off my torso (or something like that) HERE.

As I mentioned, I just wanted to watch Jersey Shore in my pain/drugged haze. But tonight was ops and I had to be there. Since my ePass transponder was in the shop with the rest of my car, I had to drive all the way out on Colonial Drive, a study of stop-n-go Iphone-distracted reaction times. I took something like an hour to get there.

Anyway, good session though sparsely attended. Matthew wanted to dispatch – he’d been watching how it was done and even brought a replacement engineer with him (so how could I say no?). Actually, for a first time, he did pretty good (although my definition of pretty good is rather whimsical, sedation-wise. I watched Silver Bullet 2 go into emergency to avoid Gomezing a freight atop a spindly wooden trestle at Harris Glen). So outside of perhaps 100 deaths, he did a good job.

Since I was pretty knackered at that point, I decided to run a train. Picked 298 out of Cincy, running with two Geep-9s on the head. Didn’t meet anyone on the roll (lots of people did the old run-one-and-done bit). Glided through the curves along the Mingo river valley, slipped into Martin Yard, tacked on a lot of cars and hit the rails. After stalling on the Red Rock grade (no surprise there, only two Geeps, right?), I called down helpers. Uncoupling them at Harris Glen was a lot of fun since I was running against newly sceniced mountains (and stunningly gorgeous rockwork, I might add). In fact, everything was fine in the run until I got to Calypso. Once again, the rough trackwork there was a spoiler – I had cars toppling off my train through a trailing point turnout, which is about as bad as it can get. I just stood there, rerailing cars and watching following ones tip and sway like drunks in a hurricane and wondered why our trackwork had to be so ruddy awful.

I’m not sure what I’m thinking at this point. I think I’m just pain-scored and doped and tired and frustrated, but really, we need to do something about this. I’m considering alternative / rebuilds at this point. Once the drugs wear off, I’ll see what I come up with.

>>>IF MINDLESS ENTERTAINMENT IS WHAT YOU CRAVE, CONSIDER MY FINE NOVELS<<<