ince we had Deland behind us and a spare weekend, and Zeus was hammering me for a Tusk Coast session, we set up for a Saturday and made it a clubhouse open house for general members. Some did show up but my attention was locked on my Tuscarora. It was a busy summer day on our railroading epic.

Of course, Zeus couldn’t be found the day before an I had no confirmation of what he’d bring for his ACL version of my railroad so I printed up Pennsy switchlists and set up with that in mind. We started with me as dispatcher, Mike as Tusk station operator, Kyle on levers, Zach (a late stand-in) on the scheduled runs, and Jim training young Luke on the coal extras. Oh, and Pete to provide general distractions.

About two (flip) hours in, Zeus did show up – dog tired and dressed to the nines in a suit an tie. I’m not sure what this was all about – I’m sure there’s a story behind this. But he bumped Zach out (who could now go out to the N-Trak smoking lounge and maybe pick up some of Pete’s bad habits) and ran the scheduled trains from WM-1 onwards. I know he was dragging but, hey, he ran the session so that worked.

The thing was, today was a big change to the layout. Not only were the timetables altered (now version 6) but we were also going to run my packet system, altered to work on this railroad. At first, I wasn’t sure – there was a lot of dicking around (I mentioned Pete, right?) and I could hardly be heard by the Station Operator, five feet away. But things finally settled down, people got into the session, and the SO and I got into the swing of the packets. And yes, I believe they worked better than the card system (with its hand-back bit that always distracted from the railroad). Now you can grab up a hooped order, check it and proceed. Yeah, we had piles of the thing at the end – we wrote something like twenty-six or so of them but it really added a bit more railroading to this diminutive giant.

The coal guys, Jim and Luke, were hampered by a lack of empty hopper strings from the dock. At one point, they actually ran a light engine move back to he mine, something you don’t see often. As for the operations, we did get into some minor delays from a lot of opposing traffic situations. This led in to major delays as, at 2pm, the skies opened up with heavy rains and travel times between stations doubled. And, in one of the weirdest random events, the MOW crews needed restricted speeds across South Fork Tenmile Creek trestle the moment the rains stopped – I’m sure that paint went on on really nice on wet metal. So see, we simulate railroading on the Tuscarora all the way down to the blunt idiocies of the thing.

The afternoon also saw Luke running the coal solo as Jim gave him his lead – he even had to deal with dropping a couple of hoppers off on various runs, to Zeus’ greater annoyance. And Zach took over as Dispatcher, and honestly, I don’t remember how it happened (maybe a crowbar across the back of the skull. Honestly, the hand-over is blank). But he was well-versed in dispatching over the old system and the packets are a paperwork change, nothing too drastic if you know the tricks to Tusk DSing. But man, he must have have wiretapped the new telephone lines down to Tusk and figured it out because he fit right in and ran the session to a successful conclusion.

The funny bit (and I’d be remiss to not mention it) is my rule on “running late”. Generally, if you are a timetabled train and you are running late, when that train gets into Westly or Easton, you can run the next train out immediately to attempt to regain your schedule. But extras, they don’t get this ability because they don’t “run late”. They just poke along. So when they hit Westly or Easton, they end their hour, regardless of delays at Tusk. Well, the coal had gotten hammered in the rains and such – with the timetable trains delayed, I sent a train order to the Tusk SO to hold the extras until Zeus could climb back on schedule. With his scheduled parade back on the advertised, with the skies clearing and the wet paint dripping into Tenmile Creek, the railroad was finally back on time, even though the coal was suffering some serious interruptions to service. I was sitting near Zach as he worked the session, one eye in finishing the current coal moves so the delayed Tidewaters could finally get out of the eastern ports. The coal extra came into Easton and he asked if he could run it out of Westly again and cop another lap. I told him why he couldn’t (see above). He told me that made no sense and to jam a blade deep into my irony, he wrote a train order to himself at Westly, allowing Extra 5008 to run. Damn, didn’t see my train orders being used against me. If this keeps up, they might host Tusk sessions without me!

But overall, it was a great time. Luke brought the Tidewater home just before midnight and got the CCR engine over to Jacobs for a refuel. Everyone seemed to have fun. And now Luke’s eyeing the towerman job, Zach’s got DS figured out and more people want to run. We were running with seven or eight people through the day, so it gets more crowded the more we op Tusk (see the top photo). But I guess that’s to the good. I think we’ll try for an ACL session in May, that is, if our college boy can get me a roster in time.

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