t was an interesting way to pull together a session. I asked around but everyone was going on vacation. Then I thought I’d run solo Thursday after a cancer-status-check with my surgeon; he’s all the way down in Celebration (and for people who don’t know about that, well, given Interstate 4 traffic, that’s like saying “He’s on the other side of the D-Day invasion”). Then I thought, no, maybe I’ll just go to my local coffee shop and veg.

Then young Zeus who is going off to school started in on me.It was all that “How about this day? How about that day?” I could but he couldn’t. Or he could but I couldn’t.

“How about tomorrow?” he asked. Yeah how about then. I started to weakly say I had “other plans” (like coffee and a danish). And that sounded pansy, even for me. So, yes, Thursday.

Glad I did.

Had the Tuscarora set up by the time he came out, standard two-person session, tower and local. Put a covered hopper on the team track for localized spotting (it was going to the brickyards, which meant running the zipper). Good enough.

Zeus ran the local/freight job for the first eleven scale hours (about forty-five minutes) and we paced through things pretty well. He forgot to blow at the grade crossing, I forgot to drop the train order signal. But yes, it was casual operations fun (the thing the Tuscarora does best). As the second local rolled onto its spur, job done at midday, I asked if he wanted to keep going or switch to tower. He wanted to try TUSK interlocking.

Uh oh. Newbie in the tower.

This was going to take a lot longer that the usual two-man ninety minute session.

“Sure, he’s hot on an SW-7. But that doesn’t mean he can run an interlocking plant, does it?”

One of my cute moves – using a bobber caboose to just squeeze into a tight spot. That box is going into the brick yard.

I don’t know what to say. Maybe it’s the “old guy pissed at young guys being able to pick up concepts quickly”. Maybe he’s effing Baby Jesus. I dunno. But all I had to do was explain that it was turnouts, locks and signals, in that order. He fumbled once or twice (every operator does) but really, he got it. Fast. Faster than anyone I’ve even seen (and Kyle has a hobby of English Interlocking). I’ve seen a lot of amazing things on Tuscarora operations (“I’ve seen passenger coaches full of milk” (Rutger Hauer mis-quote)). Some good and some amazingly bad. But man, watching Zeus walk those levers through their paces was crazy. And he picked up the trick I use, that if you are going into the siding for a quick fetch, you green the signal in and while the train is in transition, you green the exit signal for the return trip). Had to nod at that.

Still, the old dog did show him some old tricks (like that the inner industrial yard won’t take an engine and four cars into the freight house track). And there was my slick move using a bobber caboose that came off well. Also showed him how to slip everything home on the PeeDee run in quick order.

But yeah, we knocked it out in ninety minutes. It was a great session with a young guy that almost, nearly changed my opinion of young people.

Okay, no, he was good. Damn good.

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All photos Zeus H

This session got scrapped, but in a good way!