uite a day over at the Virginia SouthWestern. It was great to have four members there – all in our yellow shirts! we looked like some sort of Japanese anime super-group – “N-Trak Avengers ASSEMBLE!” Also present were two old-time members, Bob M and Frankie Z. Good to see the old group reformed, ready to show these HO guys how we do things!

Kinda a bit of a bracer, to sit in the L&N hotseat and get ready to do dispatcher magic. So much is weighing on this – if I mess up, everyone will know (so much for that projection of confidence I trot out each session). Next to me, Southern DS Tom W is having problems with his phone – dead as a “Not in Effect” engineer in a crushed cab. Superintendent John is crawling around on the floor around me, tracing wires. Southern engineers are lining up behind me to get voice-dub warrants from the Southern desk, and early L&N/NS trains are crackling down the line for warrants to proceed. Tom’s too busy so I can’t get approval to take Edison rights, so I just take it anyway and keep an ear to his verbals in case he tries to write a warrant to the contested track. I’ll have to kill him. Make it look like an accident. So yes, the start of the session is a bit chaotic.

But eventually John got the phones back up on both desks, my train was through Edison with the Southern DS none the wiser, and we settled in to running this beast.

An L&N train shoots the shared track at Edison Jct. Not sure I’d gotten trackage rights for this one.

Things went well for the first hour or so – I settled in to working off a DS sheet and keeping our traffic moving. And then it happened, the sort of HO electrical fault that sends Jacob’s Ladders crackling down the rails and blows sparks like a command deck on a starship. Truthfully, the N-scale guys were about to dive under the furniture like kittens in a thunderstorm. N-scale short might cause your wrist hairs to stand. HO shorts can make your teeth clatter like castanets and you end up forgetting your entire seventh-grade. I think a half-dozen engines fried chips in this disaster. Everyone backed away while John and his crew worked the issue – they finally got the layout up but Citico (south staging for the Southern) was out – no trains could come out and southbounders would stack in the lower helix. So that meant we had limited time for running and we took advantage of it.

So a good DS moment for me and a not-so-good. The good: Tom was off slapping one of his engineers around the layout room and I was alone in the office when a call came in to the Southern desk. It was Gail, trying to move 333 to Blackwood. I’ve got the L&N headset on one ear and am trying to hold the Southern headset to the other – the headpiece fell off when I did and went under the desk, leaving me with a handful of mike and earpiece. This I pressed to my ear and took the request. Glanced at the magnetic board – that only tells me where trains are. Scanned the Train Sheet (thank goodness Tom keeps his updated) and found that anther train had been sent from Granfield north to Blackwood. Gave her a quick warrant to proceed-after-arrival – even put my initials on the ticket which in reflection was a dumb move – should have signed it as dispatcher TW. That way, my own ass would be covered.

The dumb move for me was moving one train across Goodbee shared trackage into Granfield and then following it with a longer coal train (which would foul past the trailing turnout, but that was fine. Zack was supposed to be coming down the hill from Norton, into the Granfield siding, a three-train meet. I do it all the time. But with Bob going down the wrong track and having to back Jeff out to pull in behind him, and ensure that Bob would also flag the opposing traffic down the siding, I was really busy. And that’s when Southern 333 pulled into their main at Granfield, looking for clearance across the Goodbee shared track (which I’d now fouled). I just needed Zach to get in and clear – my two northbounds had paper to run north after the meet.

Zach: “I’m fouling behind me. Too long”.

Nightmare. Four trains deadlocked.

Zach asked if, this late in the session, I’d want to just 0-5-0 the excess out but fairness and stupidity tempered my response. I gave him two warrants – one to back to Blackwood, another to return to Granfield after the two had passed. Yes, we burned away the last five minutes of the session with this goofball mistake. The two northbounds only got clear, 333 got the warrant for shared, and then a clinically-depressed superintendent called the session so he could sprawl under the layout with a bottle of bourbon.

Blackwood, part of the mountain gap two railroads fight over.

I’m not sure if you’d say this was a successful run of the VSW. Still, it was fun and the crews seemed in high spirits. Any session you can walk away from…

Thanks, John, for having us. Once the fire damage is repaired, have us back!

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All photos Zach B

Norton Yard, with everything a train yard needs except a good wash rack.