ub leverman Zeus H had a dream job for a young man about to enroll in Miami Dade College; midnight shift working the levers on Atlantic Coast Line’s Tusk Coast Interlocking Tower. But then a miscommunication between him and Station Operator Kyle put the West Drill out on the main, with rights over all trains, moments before Extra 5001 – the first section of three lugging pea-grade down from the scattered Westly tipples – rang the inbound announciator. The Drill’s cars were scattered over the Tenmile Creek trestle in mid-classificaiton, under rights of seniority granted by his office. Zeus looked out the window at the headlights heaving to a heavy stop at his distant signal, imagining what engineer Wells might be muttering in his coal-dusted cab. Then station operator Kyle showed him a telegraph hot off the printer; the first coal section had to run two cars up the LM&O branch to Bexley, a twenty minute trip even through the Drill was working up that way. Total deadlock disaster! The young man angrily pounded the tower’s paint-pealing window sill. “F**k”

The f**k moment, with TE-1 still crewing up and X5001 waiting to get up the branch to drop hoppers. According to the Dispatcher’s train sheet, this extra took an hour in Tuscarora to get his job done (Photo: John DV)

So just as the Tuscarora simulates operations in Pennsy coal country, and Tusk Hill does the English Midlands, we now have Tusk Coast, swapping the PRR out for ACL equipment. And Zeus, being young and foolhardy, answered “yes” every difficulty setting the Tusk has to offer. “Yes” to random events (we settled on two). “Yes” to Bexley drops. And to coal setouts. And to not one but two additional cars to be switched. We’ve never run with the session maxed like this and it showed.

Heavy switching by a later local. Notice the stock car – that’s a first on this railroad! (Photo: John DV)

Also hampering us was the fact that none of our coal consumers had empties at the midnight start, meaning the coal operator was short of MTs all night. And so he sat on his lumps on the tipple-side piles, weeping over how much coal would go to waste, a pathetic sight that moved me to apathy. With computer generated random freight loading, dem’s da breaks. And I’ll mention this – the coal engineer needs to consider oncoming scheduled traffic before declaring “YES” when asked if he is departing a station. First off, there is a part on his sheet where he can check off each train to be sure he’s met them. And, even more obvious, he can just look at the next station (about three feet away) to see if the scheduled train is coming at him before motoring out. But I guess he’s focused on blowing at the grade crossing. Which he didn’t do.

The coal train hooking up, hampered by a car shortage. The new (old?) Westly Mine looms over the scene, and in the background, geographically appropriate, is Pittsburgh (Photo: Zach B)

So we struggled through the first third of the session, the railroad hampered by too many extra jobs, not enough hoppers and some untested rolling stock teething questions (I swear, that light gondola seemed to float off the rails). And once we got to more standard running, the coal extra wasn’t checking his timetable (only Dispatcher Zach’s quick actions held freights back as the extra ran against them, on their time, one foot in the grave). This led to a quick round of blame-someone-else as Tusk Coast tower, the dispatcher and the superintendent differed on how a railroad would run (in Utopia) instead of how it really runs (under TT&TO). The leverman tried to add his two cents, only to be told to shut up by his station operator. We assume that Zeus will go to college, gain skills and respect, take a high post in the ACL railroad and fire the operator once the opportunity presented itself and sweet revenge is his. Finally the interlocking team decided to basically mutiny, refusing to acknowledge OS reports down the line. So yes, we were a transportation company in crisis.

Dispatcher Zach and I made a painfully bad move by not issuing a simple “continuing meet” order when a long string of opposing trains were out on the line (don’t worry if you don’t understand this – we didn’t either). He knows it and I know it. I think we’ll always use the continuing meet order from now on unless it is absolutely clear that the single meet order will work. But I’ll say this, Zach did a superb job dispatching (he is the only other human on the planet besides me who has done this) (yeah, eight billion and none of you can do it). I’m impressed. He even faced down mutiny when Operator Kyle questioned life, the universe and our methods. And his train sheets are neat and orderly, and mine look like a murder victim dying on the floor, writing a desperate message in blood denoting who dun it.

If you are wondering why your Tuscarora beer tastes like diesel fumes, this is why. (Photo: John DV)

While I pretty much sat out and offered helpful advice (better known as screaming curses at erring employees) we did have an engineer leave early (after some really good running), the exasperated station operator swapped to the scheduled train and I got the station operator gig. Enjoyed working with Zach getting the final couple of trains through (and since I was sitting right next to the coal engineer, I could lean over to him and whisper, gently, “Tidewater now?”. I really do like that job and it’s a bit of a necessity (as we learned in earlier sessions). Very busy. And, of course, you can belittle the young leverman, always fun.

Eventually we got our shit together and pushed the session to completion. I’ll say this – even with all the shouting and finger-pointing, the strange switching strategies and the fact that nobody was blowing for the grade crossing (the poor crossing flagman was out in the elements, protecting motorists in fine Brightline fashion), even with all that, the crews stuck to their guns, getting through the session in four and a half hours. And that’s actually in keeping with the usual sessions and what I’d expect, for all those additions.

Lessons learned – we need weighted cars. And no more twisting the difficulty dial to maximum. I mean, did you see the town at Bexley? Four cars? Five? That was a new one. We packed the branch.

I don’t remember what caused it, but at this session the started with Zeus’ expletive ended with another (“Oh s**t”). Yes, it was that sort of a session.

A really fun one.

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A show of teamwork as a local plucks an MT hopper car off a westbound train and moves it to Lowery Brickyard. The head-end power is up the line west, following this move down the siding. After this harmonious moment, the bickering resumed. (Photo: John DV)