OpsLog – YVRR – 2/4/2025

OpsLog – YVRR – 2/4/2025

he last time (a week or so ago) I was supposed to run on Jack Ferguson’s nifty little Yosemite Valley Railroad, I was at the dealership and found out that my car was a road-surface Hindenburg (fuel was leaking from a defective pump). So we called that one off.

This was our reschedule.

Now, Jack’s railroad is a nifty little runner, unitracked and smooth running. It’s got a full loop and ops are essentially a train coming onto the line (like my MT-1) and eventually leaving (like my EM-2 (the PeeDee)). There is some yard work, a pair of locals, a tourist train, pretty much a nifty shift between running and switching. I’ve run it once before and really enjoyed it.

So I showed up and Greg wasn’t there. We shrugged it off and got started, only to get a call that Greg was running late (he hadn’t even left home yet and it’s an hour away). Well, Jack was there (as superintendent) and I was there (as a hogger) and so we decided to go anyway. It’s a sequential schedule with no time crush; easy running. Jack helped me figure out what I had to do next and so I just ran my way through the entire day’s run (except for the final train). But that was the thing – it was a nice day running trains and swapping stories with my host, of taking a quick break for snacks before returning to the cab. And since I’m always happy to crack throttles, I had a great time hogging up everything.

I did knock a car or two off the track, ran a turnout and defanged one of Jack’s engines (is my face red).

As for Greg, he got there and hour late, talked to Jack’s wife for thirty minutes, sat in the room talking at us for fifteen minutes, and finally ran the last switching job (with some griping).

Facts are facts.

>>>AND BOOKS ARE BOOKS<<<