t was such a nice morning. Came out of the house as the sun broke over the trees, breath steaming in the cold as I made my way to the car. Swung by the coffee shop to pick up a cup. Dropped by Zach’s place to mailbag him for the ride out – an  informal meeting of the ONT Operations Committee. Happy to say while we rode out, we might have cracked the steel mill output dilemma, as well as tidying up the freight flow across our club’s bridge route. Time for a quick meal in Wendy’s before heading over to John Wilke’s L&M layout for a great day of coal lugging on his two-railroad pike. Settled into the dispatcher seat for a day on the heavy L&N line, Donovan paired up on the Southern desk. Steaming cup of coffee within reach, a sharp pencil ready, the train sheet, the cameras, everything ready. Radio checks with the superintendent. All perfect. And we’re off.

The first train of the day was out of Eljobean, lugging coal out of the mine. Asked for permission to line across the Southern’s trackage at Edison, granted. Tossed the CTC toggles (on a computer screen) and watched everything click over. Another train was just busting out of Norton, northbound, so I set up a meet for the two at Ramsey, a passing siding that is – sorry to say – pure evil. Nothing ever works right at Ramsey. And sure enough, the southbound approach turnout was giving me a weird display. It “felt” like it had locked, it gave every indication, but something was wrong.

What was wrong is that it didn’t throw, both trains went head-on in Ramsey’s tunnel, and the superintendent had fetch out the bodies and equipment. Meanwhile, that bashed-in coal train then backed without looking – like a harried mother backing over a shopping cart in a parking lot – and ran over the Southern main’s turnouts (which I’d realigned since I thought I was done with it). And that was the first meet of the day.

“Taaa-Daaaaa”

The superintendent did find a failed board that refused to toss the points (so i was absolved from blame for that). But things were moving at high speeds now and I didn’t have time for anything else but warrant writing.

The L&N air crews were busy today, rolling the dispatchocopter back out onto the launch catapult so I could repeatedly fly down steep valleys to where turnouts were left locked against me, searching for missing trains and climbing into helixes for the head-banging fun of it.

The Grande Finale was the move through the shared Goodbee/Jaybird trackage. A parade of three southbound trains were snaking through it – Kyle’s, then a coal train, then the overlong OWTX special. Northbound was 244, a manifest. I should have kept him in Atlanta so that I could get the others in safely but I felt duty-bound to move him along – after all, I’d killed his daddy at Ramsey earlier that day.

Zack B and Tom W find a new way to classify cars in Norton Yard – wreck ’em.

The Interstate RR (passing atop the bridge) is one of the only railroads not radio-equipped. I’ve never seen them call the Southern Dispatcher in two sessions.

I won’t explain how three southbounds would get around a northbound – trust me that I had it all figured out. What I didn’t account for is that Kyle’s turn that was detailed in the lineup sheet to leave the mainline and work the shaft at BlueJay couldn’t. Yes, the mine is in BlueJay but the turnout for it is in Caywood (this was some sort of early and perverse April Fools Day joke). But of course 244 was holding in Kyle’s path in the siding he needed. With my plans smoldering in ruin, I had to improvise. On one side, I had 30 years of dispatching knowledge. On the other, the crews were a bit timid to go around Kyle at BlueJay, then derailment-happy at Caywood, and then one of them backed into the other one several times (this is when Kyle had to step in on the ground and direct things – the blades of the dispatchocopter were drooping at this point). Two Southern trains had also pulled up to use the shared (L&N-owned) and seemed to take umbrage at me telling them not to enter my rails – one Southern engineer called me and argued – look, you don’t work for me and I can’t tell you what to do (not in railroad terms, at least) – call Donovan. When we finally cleared out the Four Trains of the Apocalypse, the Southern DS nearly ran the two Southern moves into each other (on my high iron!). We were able to use the CTC district to wiggle them by on a lap siding pass, usually fun to watch unless  you had blood running out of your ears.

After that, the session wound down. We dug Zach out of the pile of Norton cars, his pride intact from merely surviving a trick in that bowling alley of a classification yard. But I’ll tell you – I was really proud of the ONT boys. As always, we supply a solid block of skill to the sessions we attend.

Maybe we can get John to pay us? I’ll look into that.

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All photos (and many assists) care of Kyle S

A moment of a small smile – a crew was waiting for the OWTX train to meet them. They came into the dispatcher’s office to inquire. Apparently they overlooked that the massive brilliant-green train, some 35 cars long, had already gone by. Must have been looking the other way.