his was going to be a difficult session – first off, it’s in the back of the clinic where I had my cat put to sleep less than a week ago. And second, we hadn’t run there in forever.

But Doc’s been thinking about things. Fortunately his track plan is pretty much the same so there were only minor corrections to the panel program. We had an odd assortment of operators show up – some ex-club members (hey, I don’t care if you are a Nazi, as long as you run a train)(well, maybe I do). And we had some new/old members (guys who have recently returned). But once everyone was in position with all trains dialed, we started.

I’ll give Doc this – his line was crowded for much of the time, San Diego to Market Street. I was ducking them in and out and passing them in three-packs around the Coronado Loop. We did suffer a strange short about a third of the way in – Doc thinks it’s the throttles, me, not so sure. But what matters is we cleared it and kept running. After that, things smoothed out. Trains rolled with little delay, and people had a lot of fun.

I even got to pick up the last manifest out of Los Vegas, streaming across the desert like a bullet, meeting Bruce down the Riverside Siding, then down through Diego with a bee-line through Market Street yard. Got in just north of the border – pulled in at San Ysidroand neatly reversed my train, caboose on the front, engines on the back for the final backing move across the border into TJ. That was a lot of fun, just tucking it away in the last ten fast-minutes, dropping the engines and shutting down. Good session.

So that’s, Doc, for providing a Sunday smile for all of us. Wish me had more layouts on the rotation.

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