o it’s the day after. I’m sitting in the local coffee house with a cup of joe, looking all urbane and cool. And it’s hard to sip coffee with this big mother-loving smile on my face.

We had a great session last night.

The Tusk has been down for a couple of months with computer problems. The interlocking tower would either fail to boot or, after an innocent start, suddenly fail catastrophically. I have people who drive a hundred miles to attend. I can’t risk getting them out here for an annulled session.

The drill works across the Ten Mile Creek trestle, the growing mine community in the background. In the distance, a coal extra waits for the line to clear.

Thanks and praise goes to designer Steve and his son Scott for code cleanup, debugging installs and a couple of days troubleshooting at the club (and to Lynn for her babysitting and Eliza for being the best girl possible). We loaded debug capabilities, we found issues, we fixed and I called a session.

So, this is an OpsLog, a report on ops, and not a diatribe on the frustrations of my life. To begin – after the technological hiatus, we were all rusty. As dispatcher, I had to look over the order legend carefully to remember how I’d done it in the past. Chris was a relative newbie on the scheduled runs but he did fine. Zach in the tower was making Betty scream (“Fault Lever Five!”). And Greg, well, he didn’t remember anything about the ten-mile gap, the announciator bell or how the coal sheet worked*. So yes, it was half-wit day on the Tuscarora Branch Line.

But happily everyone tightened up quickly. The rails were singing as train after train ran the line between Westly and Easton. Chris did the local sharp (with observational input from everyone around the table). The orders went down clean and Zach was smooth enough to run two tower jobs, the leverman and station operator. It can be done but only if you are A-Number-One grade (once or twice he caught a train on a stale red board and had to clearance card them out). Nit picking.

Some slick things from the night. There was a moment when Tuscarora was holding two trains and WT-1 had to run up to Bexley to drop off a car (a twenty-minute round trip). The problem was he’d have to leave the caboose in Tuscarora while he was gone. I was all for swapping the caboose deeper into the cut, the to-be-dropped covered hopper on the tail end for the push up the branch. Towerman Zach advised WT-1 to leave it on the Ten Mile Creek trestle. While the freight was up the branch, the extra coal could do his own Tuscarora runaround for his final push to the power plant, nudging the caboose just-a-wee-bit along the trestle as he swung in behind his cut. Really, it was pretty slick. (I’ll mention, in retrospect, that my solution might have been best from an operational point of view. The conductor is on the caboose along with his paperwork. He really needs to probably go along with his train on the run up to Bexley under a very specific train order, with the crew riding along to cut off the final car off the back end. But that’s operations – do it as you wish to; you only answer for it if someone gets killed (or worse, a car gets mis-spotted)).

This reefer was precariously spotted by the local in the “Tuscarora blind spot” to make room. When the coal extra triggered the announciator and I heard the tower levers go over and saw the distant and home repeaters go green, I had to watch. And wince.

There was also that reefer that got literally sandwiched between two passing trains. I had to count grab irons after that maneuver.

I got a smile when the Tuscarora station operator called me (as the Westly station operator) and requested that the scheduled train and its following extra currently holding at my platform run down nose to tail to his interlocking. I leaned out the door and asked the coal hauler if he wanted to ride the crummy down to Tuscarora. He said “No” and gave it ten minutes of following time. So good for him.

Additionally, we did a new trick on the line last night – we added two deadhead cars on the scheduled train. This meant that the train was a bit longer (and looks better than the tiny little Easton Turn at session’s end). Also, it can cause the mildest of headaches in some of the switching moves. Overall, the session ran four hours and the crew was dedicated enough to give me a debrief following the action (all very positive).

We did have a minor tunnel blockage in the line above Bexley. It was down for three hours (a random event). It should have been catastrophic but no scheduled movements were going that way during the time. When Chris and his crew were finally ready to go up the line they had to wait a whole ten minutes at signal #8 before the MOW team reported the line clear. They just clustered around their pilot coupler and smoked on my time, the deadbeats.

Drove home after midnight, poured a glass of wine, put my feet up and smiled. “F**k yeah.”

Great night. Thanks, guys.

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*Something is not adding up on the coal sheets. I looked them over this morning and really couldn’t account for some of the runs. The fact that the MT cars aren’t shown in the paperwork per their mine placement makes me a bit dubious. The UMW and the PRR are resolved to have better auditing in the future.

All Photos provided by Zach B

A crazy moment at 2AM as TE-1 and the coal extra both find themselves spotting on the outer industrial track. Hoppers (covered and otherwise) have been cut out and the leverman makes the correct call – in moments, he’ll send TE-1 out first with the extra following.

The deadhead pair sit on Tuscarora siding on a westbound train, waiting for the signal #8 to depart. Looks like they are checking the orders just hooped up to them.

“Bitching Betty” waves from TUSK tower, happy to be back in her job. It’s a stupid job, but it’s her job.