kay, so a couple of things about Tom Wilson’s ops session on the Pittsburgh & West Virginia.

First one’s on me. I’ve operated a couple of times in 2020 (and before) as a dispatcher here under TT&TO. I was proud of our efforts – Bruce Notman hit it out of the park as my Station Operator.

But here’s the weird part. I’ve run six more times (including last Friday) and only now, after possible 100+ warrants, that I noticed there is a glaring error on them.

So, for those who understand warrants, let me show you the key element’s on the P&WV warrants. I’ll only show you the entries that matter…

2. Proceed to _________

4. Between ______ and ______ make all movements at restricted speed, watching for train, engines, men or machines ahead.

5. Hold Main rack at Last Named Point

6. Take Siding at Last Named Point.

10. Use of ALL tracks at Last Named Point for Switching Moves.

Again, these are only the check boxes that matter. So, do you see it?

So let’s say you are leaving Rook Yard (RO), heading to Avella Siding (AV) but warn the crew that between Rook Yard and Bridgeville (BR), they need to slow for a train working that area. So, I’m going to assume that you’ll give checkbox 2 (AV), checkbox 4 (RO and BR), and checkbox 6 (for AV siding). Does that sound right?

Only now, after over a hundred warrants, did I spot the problem with the ordering on these warrants. You see, sure, you can tell the train to proceed to Avella. Fine and good. And you can put a restricted speed order for RO to BR on the restricted speed checkbox. Also good. But for orders 5, 6, and 10, the reference to “Last Named Point” is not Avella (your intent) but Bridgeville (from checkbox 4, since that was the last named point you used.

How could I have missed that? Four years and I never noticed it. Neither did the dozen of operators Tom has had in. Woops.

I pointed it out to Host Tom – possibly not the best time, given the confusion of the session. He told me flatly that he wasn’t going to reprint them all because of that. The take-away is that we’ll have to give a small prebrief and make sure that everyone knows that “Last Named Point” is actually a reference to checkbox 2, and not anything else.

So yes, that’s on me.

What’s on the operators is the confusion that took place during the session. You’d think there would be a certain degree of pride in running flawlessly but we had a lot of confusion out there. Okay, so I didn’t have much in the way of radio coms – I had to announce overhead for trains through a secondary radio through the yardmaster – that was cumbersome. But the big setback was crews not calling when they completed. I think only one crew actually called to routinely report in at their terminus. I knew that shunting crews were moving cars out onto my main line, exceeding their authority and even running the wrong way. Really, would you run that sloppy if your tiny HO career and tiny HO life was riding in that tiny HO cab? I had cars left out on active sidings (with no mention concerning this). Another crew had an initial bunny-hop order to just get them onto the division at Avella. I was going to hold them there until the line cleared. When I did have an opening, I couldn’t raise them to issue a new order. Imagine my surprise when I found they’d run the entire layout, all the way to Connellsville on the other side of the layout without any paper at all. Outstanding!

And here’s the irony – with the crews doing damn-all whatever-they-liked in the train room, one of the operators came out to deal with a phone call to a business about an order to be picked up. He talked for twenty minutes – what time did they close? Could it be left someplace else for them to pick up? Were they open on Saturday? How about Monday morning?

And I thought – you know, if you’d put as much thought into your warrants as you did for your package, maybe it would have gone better.

I know this sounds bitchy, but think about this way – you guys are operating trains. I’m trying to dispatch. But when you cut me out of communications, run without warrants, run sloppy, you aren’t operating trains, you are playing with toys. And cutting me out of the game means I’m sitting at a table for five hours with nothing to really do. It ruins the realism for you. It ruins the enjoyment for me.

I made my own mistakes – like trying to pass trains in Rook Yard (like Norton, it is a single track yard). Did that once or twice. I’ll own that one. But if I wasn’t chasing my tail getting info from errant crews, maybe I wouldn’t have been distracted and forgotten that. Oh well. So watch this space, blog-fans, and see if I’m ever invited back. I’d like to. Tom has a great layout and I always enjoy the run. But we have to understand the importance and reason behind the communications we simulate.

Still – thanks, Tom!

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