o I’m standing under a post-midnight sky, brilliant with summer stars. Crickets are chirping. Bats flutter past. You might imagine I can smell dew-laden grass but no, my nose is numb from sulfuric diesel fumes, radiating from the fuel distributor Atlantic Coast Line uses to refuel engines out here in the ass end of nowhere. I’m pumping gallon after gallon into my Dash-9. Yes, the prior engineer was trying to look goody-goody to railroad management, running the Tidewater late to up his tonnage. He brought the unit in after midnight, on fumes, like a teenager with his dad’s car.

I can hear WT-1 whistling by the nearby train crossing. I glance at my watch. He’s on time, but I should have been gone a while ago. The conductor said that we’re going to run light down to Easton to pick up empties to move north. Just another night on Tusk Coast.

Got the empties and got back to Tuscarora in time to find the drill working on the main. Another reason not to run late!

So we kicked off the new year with another Tuscarora session, this time running Zeus’ variant with ACL equipment. I’d manage to pry Greg off coal and put him with Luke running the scheduled trains. Zeus was on the tower. Normally this sort of session goes down when it is just us but here we were on club night, trying to get things done while everyone ran trains like maniacs around us. But for us, we were focused on the miniature world that is Tuscarora.

Well, somewhat. About three scale hours in, I saw a situation developing and kept quiet. Zeus hadn’t quite grasped that his job was two-tiered – yes, he had to move trains through the plant, but was was part of an interlocking chain, meaning he had to keep aware of what was further down the line (i.e. what was going on in Easton-Westly staging). Suddenly he realized that the scheduled and extra trains were fouling each other. And to untangle this, he sent me ahead (which put the overnight timetabled jobs further and further behind). After about two hours of that (with some of the mid-morning trains running ninety minutes down) he got his shit together and pinned down my coal until he was back on the advertised. After that, we ran pretty much on the dot.

Looking over the fence, I’m not sure if I want to know why a tank car is getting shifted through Levine Scrap & Metal.

Of course, you put Greg anywhere and there is bound to be an argument. Something that I carefully consider in the macro view looks dumb from the micro view. In this case, it was a box car out of the brickyard that had to be pushed to other side of outer industrial. Yes, it’s a pain-in-the-butt move that, in his words, was “nothing more than moving a car 100 feet”. It took a couple of times for me to get it through it him that the reason for this entire run-around-palooza was that WE-1, a road freight, needs to stop for ten minutes and pick it up in a simple trailing-point move. I can’t have road units hunting around in the dark for a car, especially since the brick yard gate will be chained up by the time they come in. So yes, we finally reached an understanding. My way.

But since I’d been spouting off in other hobby discussions about the importance of “proper train handling”, the crew was lined up like crows on a wire when I messed up. I’d run the entire session doing everything proper – blowing the crossing, ringing the bell when moving down cuts of cars, all that. But when I was trying to pull the Tidewater, my solitary road until was spinning its wheels (my own light power pulls it just fine). The momentum (usually I enjoy it) was also working against me. Came out of Easton with observer Leonard giving me the finger (i.e. dropping “hand”) and suddenly I hit the straight patch by the brickyards and the train dug in and took off. I spun down to zero but the units wouldn’t stop quick enough, letting me sail right through signal 7, down on the west side. Everyone got a laugh of the old hogger getting a demerit for that. Yeah, okay, laugh it up, boys. The Tuscarora always gets its revenge.

But really, outside of being melodramatic for the sake of the blog, it was a great session even with all the bother that comes from “Just Run Trains” (or possibly “Just Crash Trains”) in the background. The small group of us around the Tusk had a great evening, the first ops session of the new year.

Thanks to Zeus for hosting.

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All photos credited to Zach B. Thanks!

Another trainload of coal ready to leave Westly.