n-trak

May 23, 2019

OpsLog – LM&O – 5/22/2019

ooooooooom! Crash! “Oh no, we’re burning!” “We have injured here!” “Oh, the humanity!” Okay, so that’s done. Yes, while dispatching the LM&O tonight I did manage to run two first class passenger trains (crack sister express trains, Silver Bullet 1 and 2) into each other. Forgot to give SB2 a checkbox 8, “hold until arrival of Silver Bullet 1”. So off he went and they crashed at Red Rock. To make matters worse, there was a loaded coal train sitting on the siding there so we can only expect that in the fiery wreck, the open-top hoppers caught fire and […]
June 2, 2019

ShowLog – Tampa – 6/1/2019

on’t have much to tell you for this one. Wasn’t the best start for me – got up at 4:30, bought donuts at 5am (and got the shit panhandled out of me by a Colonial Drive bum who kept asking for more – what, car keys next?). Then a long drive down to Bill’s where I got lost in Walt Woods. And then another long drive down to Tampa where the show was. But we had the gold team in for setup, the old sweats who know how everything goes together. The layout was running in fifty minutes and we […]
October 29, 2020

OpsLog – LM&O – 10/28/2020

utside of one mini-ops we tried, the last time we ran the club layout was back in February, back before the Covid storm swept over us. For a while the building stood empty. Then we reopened and did a lot of work. So for the past week, we’ve been trying to resuscitate our pike, getting those corroded rails clean, sweeping out the dust and cobwebs and trying to get something like operations going again. For the record, it was full masks, full sanitizers, and to keep the germs down, no phones – as dispatcher I sat at a table in […]
January 28, 2021

Opslog – LM&O – 1/27/2021

aybe because we had a lot of familiar faces show up. Or maybe because everyone brought all the things we needed for a good session. Or maybe because the Zanesville Local only had one car to spot. But it was a great night on the LM&O. With Cody on the DS board and Nick in the yard, the railroad organizational staffing was rock solid. Even the newbies (like Braden and his Dad) came prepared, having studied Silver Bullet Two’s timetable and walked the layout, getting a good understanding of what they would be doing. That works for me, since instead […]
May 26, 2022

ManualLog – LM&O Freight Flow – 5/26/2022

Given our last few sessions, it’s clear the crews (on the road and in the yard) don’t understand the LM&O’s freight flow. Hopefully this will help them understand. It is your responsibility to make sure that our cargoes enter, cross, and leave our bridge route as intended. So first, a legend showing car types…               Below shows the basic routing of cars across our railroad. Blue cars (Bridge Traffic) are nothing more than cuts of cars that travel endlessly between Martin and Calypso yards. You pick these cars up at the first yard you […]
July 28, 2022

OpsLog – LM&O – 7/27/2022

o of course my medical zoom meeting went long. I blew out of the house with 40 minutes til train time, traffic was a bitch, but I came into the lot with ten minutes to spare. And the parking lot was full. Came in lugging my computer and called out hello and everyone gave me rousing hellos back. Given my last few weeks, this was a very nice glow to get. And the guys knew how to set up – the track was all clean, the jobs were signed up, and everyone was ready to go. I set the clocks […]
August 25, 2022

OpsLog – LM&O – 08/24/2022

n the bad side, there were a number of near collisions, several (that I knew of/experienced) LAP orders, some running without paper, a lot of phones clutched to numb ears, a big boo-boo in the yard, and a passenger train that ran a half-day late. Okay. But on the good side, we did run all the freights, all the locals, all the coal and ore, and got to experiment with delivering cars to the Nazareth turn (well, now we know what doesn’t work). We started a little earlier and had a lot more people working throttles at the end. Everyone […]
October 27, 2022

OpsLog – LM&O – 10/26/2022

ou’ve heard of the famous “Day of Infamy”, right? Well, at Orlando N-Trak’s October session, we had our “Night of Irony”. There was that moment when a heavy freight, overloaded with motive power, told the helper crew who offered assistance to bug off, only to flounder on the hill. Had to chuckle as I wrote the warrant to get the extra units up to shove him over the summit. And then there was the member who runs locomotives as one of his many livings, who made a dying out of misreading his issued warrant and pulling out in front of […]
November 24, 2022

OpsLog – LM&O – 11/23/2022

ven though we had ops last week (look it up – it’s still on the sidebar) we decided to have a pre-Thanksgiving session, the Turkey Trot. Generally, attendance is light so we run something simple – in this case, Time Table and Train Order (the old fashion way). And even with limited staff, we ran (1) four scheduled freights, (2) four scheduled passenger trains, (3) two ore trains, (4) two limestone hauls and (5) SEVEN coal trains! So yes, we probably ran more trains in this session then we do in a normal session. It was great fun, and since […]
December 29, 2022

OpsLog – LM&O – 12/28/2022

ot my last session of the old year, but damn close. And I’m happy to say I didn’t send out this year with a bang (of trains hitting each other – hard). But it was a rough night, rough enough that when I finally ran the last freight train myself and then ejected the carbon-dioxide club into the cold at 11pm, I went home, had a beer, binge-snacked and watched anime. No more trains for now. We got everything running okay but I made an honest-to-dispatcher mistake early – had a passenger train with orders to meet a local, but […]