mall midweek scratch session of the Tusk, students and retirees (Zeus as the former, and Joe and myself for the latter). And since it was Zeus’ birthday, we ran it as an ACL job using his equipment. He ran tower, Joe was on freight and me, I was the coal lugger.

The first problem was that the mines were getting skimpy on me. I couldn’t believe the sheet (or shit) excel generated. I had three loads in Blacksville at the start, two more in Emerald as of 6am, and then nothing really cooking until 1pm (and a sparse scattering at that. By the time I could scrape up any later-day runs of weight, it would be tidewater time.

Not that I found any excess capacity here. It turned out that every time I ran something east or west, I was running into the face of Joe’s freights. Since we were not running with a dispatcher, it all came down to the towerman as to who would run, and Zeus was playing it safe and keeping the scheduled freights on the clock, holding me in Tuscarora for several hours at a time. And, really, it makes sense. Without a clock running, it’s hard to figure the impact of making timetabled trains late.

The local waterfowl return in the spring (Zeus H)

In the end, I ran five loaded coal trains total (six if you count the coke processing I did). And that made it one of the lower score sessions on record. I blame the mines.

Joe was having a good training day with this – he got a chance to work on this local switching without a lot of interruption or pressure. He did get a little “blinky” with the Pee Dee, but Zeus walked him through it. Overall, he did well, and we were glad to have him.

As for me, the horror-fest began when I took the tidewater out of  Greenwich Coal Piers. All seemed to be going well but I did get a lot of wheel slip, hard to control with momentum working against me (and Zeus pressing it with a finger to increase the traction). Then, suddenly, we realized that the engine was bucking, it front truck thumping. I stopped and we considered – maybe under the heavy loading I’d stripped a gear. Well, there is no worse feeling than damaging a loco (especially one borrowed from a friend). Unfortunately, we finished late in the afternoon (we had to clear everything away for the evening’s meeting) and so there was no time to crack open the unit and see what might be the problem (and it being a new tricky-dick Atlas, the trucks are wired to the frame).

The birthday boy works the levers (Photo by a passing Pete F)

One of five coal trains arrives – the lights in Tuscarora will be dim and flickering tonight (Pete F)

Happily, when he managed to open the trucks, he found an over-abundance of grease AND a clump of foliage that had been sucked up into the gearing. I’ve been told the unit is all back in service, meaning it will be available to under-pull the Tidewater on our next ACL run.

Which I’m looking forward to.

Thanks, guys! Great session!

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Readers have asked what TUSK tower looks like in full. Here you go (Zeus H)

3AM in West Tuscarora. WM-1 backs the caboose up the LM&O branch while X6002 rumbles up with main to Westly, with empty hoppers for the day’s limited coal production (Photo: Zeus H with ChatGPT assistance).