hat a difference forty-five minutes of traffic, a bunch of socializing and a big spaghetti dinner makes.
We’d finished the Virginia Southwestern in the late afternoon. It had been a long day. And we made it even longer with a second operations go-round, this time on Tom Wilson’s wonderful Pittsburgh & West Virginia. We all told train stories and then while Tom went over train things in the layout room, I retired to some little granddaughter’s cute pink bedroom (some dispatcher’s office that was. There wasn’t even a spittoon) to do my thing. I could hear Tom’s wife chatting with a number of operators out in the living room, a real party. Then a call for a warrant came in and I realized that some of the A-List team I had had just kinda given up. So we’d be running with a short staff.
It was going to be a long evening for the survivors, I could see. There was initially some confusion about what, exactly, East and West meant. Okay, long story – Tom’s original magnetic board (for moving train markers) had been done geographically backwards. On his panel, east was to the left, west to the right. That’s backwards from everything I know from movies. In flicks, Columbus always sails to the left side of the screen. Settlers cross the plains moving to the left. West is left. And that began a big rift between Superintendent and Dispatcher as Tom changed the world for me, arranging Connellsville and Pittsburgh in reverse. Then he added computer freight forwarding in the backwards format. And now you had Avella Freight East going west, the ninety-series fast freights going backwards, total confusion. I started the session in a lengthy discussion with either train 91 or 92 (the roster had it one way, the timetable the other). More on this later.
So the crews were lethargic, going through the motions like zombies. The party raged on in the other room and at one point, an angry grandkid came in to get her PJs and sniff at me: “This is my bedroom!”. I should have gone 1960’s steel-mill dispatcher on her: “Scram, kid”, but I didn’t.
I saw a bunch of warrant violations over the session; trains getting work done without permission or just running the last leg of their journeys without paper. I guess I was tired, too. What would have raised fiery ire from me at some other time just got a quiet shrug.
This is not to say that Tom’s PWV is any less than a spectacular layout. The steel mill alone is massive, a thing to see, the Eighth Wonder of the Model Railroad World. I need to get him to host for my club sometime (and presumably not on the heels of another great layout). We’ll see what we can do.
After people drifted off into the dark to return to their convention, Tired Tom and Resting Robert had a quiet talk about the railroad. I mentioned the confusion and he reminded me it was all because of my east-west phobia. Yes, I nodded, I know. I admit to that. But I’ve grown as a dispatcher – I never use magnetic boards unless I absolutely have to. I’d rather use the sheets like real dispatchers do. So hopefully (and especially since he’s dropping the computer forwarding system), he can review trains, timetables and things and put the PWV back on the map – the real map.
Went home and was a little surprised when I woke up to see the sun shining through my eastern window. I’m so damned confused.
Anyway, a great session, Tom.