nother biannual jaunt down to Port Saint Lucie to run on Al Sohl’s magnificent Western Bay (a DRGW narrow gauge line that will make your eyeballs hurt, the scenery so vast and, well, western). We had a contingent foursome of operators: myself, studious John L, personable Jim M (the padre), and Terry B (a newbie who seems interested in operations, has survived two club beatings and is game to try other lines). Terry and I had ridden east to the Holiday Inn marshaling yard, and I was gratified to learn that he was aware of Time Table & Train Order operations from Jerry Dziedzic’s wonderful Model Railroader articles – I’d planned a car-clinic on the topic for him but he had a passing understanding, all to the better.

Reverend Jim has taken over my old Station Operator job. Hope he empties the spittoons. (Photo: Al S)

I’d be dispatching from my Wizard-of-Oz curtained niche, using my prefabbed train order system. John and Terry found themselves in the crew pool (though, as we know, it’s not so much a “pool” as it is an inflexible cube of ice, given Al’s organizational/dictatorial methods – everything is as predetermined as fate. Even if a engineer dies in the lounge, I think Al would still make his ghost do his runs). Jim was over at my old position, Station Operator at Dolores, Dulcie and Placerville Jct (I ran that position for a year or so and used it to worm true (or, maybe, “true-ish”) TT&TO into the mix. Al was over at Alpine (I’m sure there is a play on words there, you know, Al-Pine) (sigh). And we had a newbie, Steve, who having had recent foot surgery was benched over in Navajo, where he did a super job even though he’d probably been blithely unaware of the position before this session went down. I give this detailed description of Western Bay’s operational staff, simply because, bluntly, the engineers and conductors are little more than “moving scenery” to us. For the operations group, it’s all about time, OSing, train order distribution and getting everyone through the session. It’s where the big bucks are.

So the session really ran well (from my hiding place in the curtained cubby). The first half of it went well enough – no real orders (though I was aware of a cornfield meet in the official timetable – I had a train order prepared the night before to deal with that). Crews made their stops, fell behind on their schedules and made up their times, got their work done. It was pretty relaxing.

But as the session continued, things got a bit more hectic. The Standard Time was eventually a bit varied – you know those movies that show an important room with numerous clocks showing times across the world? Yeah, it was something like that. We had a derailment in the worst possible place. The helper was dead as a brick. And the Navajo Turn left a gondola sitting on the Navajo main and Station Operator Steve overlooked it – I noticed it when I left the DS office to go take a piss.

On 243, Chip and Mark take their sweet time switching out Placerville while I go crazy. (Photo: Al S)

I guess the thing I noticed was that, even though Al has train order signals at all his stations, the crews were not paying attention to them. I even tested one crew (you know who you are) by leaving their signal down at Dolores West, meaning they should have been looking for a new train order before continuing. Jim was aware that I was going to do this but I still caught them out. Shame shame. Even the Ute Jct signals were overlooked (I don’t know what might have happened if Jim had not OSed them out of Dulce and I realized the hidden snow-shed turnout as lined (and signaled) against them). So Al, that’s probably something that needs to be hammered in in six months – you need to be looking out of your cab window for signals and know what the heck they all mean. I mean, the crews drove over to the session and interacted with dozens of traffic lights. Same thing. Know your job.

The screaming dispatcher. Every photo of me comes out progressively worse (Photo (Chip P)

And speaking of ineptitude, I was keeping up with things in the heated second half when confusion and despair settled over the land. But my big goof came from the interactions between trains 35 and 38. 38 was hung up at Dolores because a freight train was shunting cars all about the place (what happened to the priority of passengers?). And 35 was puffing on the main short of Navajo, blocked by the gondola-forgetful 121. Al was ragging on me about getting those passenger trains moving. And I was ragging back, noting that other than Dolores and Navajo, there was no place for them to get around. All single track. I’d have to try to pry them all out and get them to meet at Navajo. Finally we both tossed down our radios to “discuss” it in the aisle (i.e. a pound-down fistfight). But Al pointed out that, goddammit (sorry, Jim) we were talking about two geese (schoolbus-like rail cars) which could meet in midpoint Placerville Jct (where there isn’t a passing siding but there were plenty of spurs). I mean, it was about as involved as a grocery store parking lot. I was thinking train-trains, not just putt-putt buses. Seems like an obvious solution to me now. Anyway, I agreed to that (gulp went my pride) and because everyone as fussy and frazzled,  I flew my dispatchocopter out to find both conductors to verbal them into a work-it-out-on-the-ground meet at Placerville. Yeah, that’s one of those ideas that I’ll put in my dispatcher bag-o-tricks for next time.

Poor 344. It waited on the spur for its big moment, then crapped out. In the background, the man behind the curtain is ignored (Photo: Jim M)

On the plus side, that meet I mentioned way earlier, the cornfield meet for 243 and 38? I’d brought this up this a couple of times to management and nobody believed me (I mean, it’s right there in the timetable, yes, there). I’d given up on this and just wrote a meet order to officially get them by each other at Dolores East. Well, sitting in the lounge afterwards (steamy and sweaty), I listened to Chip complain about my meet that caused the delay that led to the 35/38 debacle. Why did he have to wait? What was I thinking? So I showed him the timetable and there, yes, there was a lap point, two trains meeting on the single line below Durango. At first he couldn’t believe it and then, slowly, he did. Yes, there was a mistake in the time table. He tried to show it to Al but Al had had it with the lot of us. I’ll leave this to Chip to pursue and if we are still operating under Timetable 19 next time, I’ll have the order prepped and ready.

In retrospect, I need a train order to pass trains – that caused a bit of confusion that I can easily rectify.

Assuming, of course, that Al has us back.

Anyway, it was a great time at the Western Bay. The balance of our problems and conflicts were actual operational frictions (which were legitimate) and not equipment failures (which were few). Anyway, thanks to Al and his South Florida guys for having us down.

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A couple of trains thread past each other at Alpine (Photo: Terry B)