operations – Page 16 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

September 16, 2024

OpsLog – LM&O – 9/15/2024

n one sense, our Saturday Night Special club ops was a shambles. Stuff broke. Trains did all sorts of unapproved maneuvers. The clock ran hyper at 15:1 and reset with each reprogramming. I had to go dump a Guinness afterwards. On the other hand, it was glorious. See, this was a training session, a chance for everyone who has wallflowered or wanted to try newer, more difficult jobs to give them a chance. We went over the warrants so all the operators would be knowledgeable [sic]. And we told everyone that everyone around them was just as inexperienced, meaning goofs […]

September 16, 2024

OpsLog – Tusk Coast – 9/15/2024

‘d just had a massive operation session the night before and hadn’t left the wind-down barroom post-brief until 1am. So why did I put myself back into the DS desk the very next day for another ops session, this time on ACL-flavored Tuscarora? Well, I’m easy. Far-away Student Zeus asked and I’m always willing to scrape up a session. So we had me on the DS panel, Greg on scheduled trains, Zeus on Coal, Zach as leverman and Mike on the station desk. So we were ready to go. The first half the session went well enough (better than the […]

September 26, 2024

OpsLog – LM&O – 9/25/2024

wake up in a sunny room. Surprising, It’s not the train crew flophouse I’m used to. A woman in white comes in to put a vase of flowers on the sill. Is this Heaven? No, wait – she’s a nurse! Is this a hospital? Was my train in a wreck? Then I see the embroidered lettering on her apron. Zanesville Sanitarium. I’m in the nut house! Yes, you guys put me there. What a frustrating session. I think I must have answered about thirty questions and found at least two drifting engines that had shorted the layout. It’s a little […]

October 20, 2024

OpsLog – TBL – 10/19/2024

nice summer day on the Tuscarora – an aspect we’ll mention a bit later. Greg and I were thinking of a two-man run but got enough interest to bump it up to six. Of course, I got there two hours early and set up in thirty minutes (why do I do this (because I’m usually freaking before ops, I’d wager)). But the guys all came out and were ready to run. I spent some of the down time explaining to the new guys how it worked (yes, this isn’t simply a tiny 2×4 foot train layout). But of course, they’d […]

October 24, 2024

OpsLog – LM&O – 10/23/2024

t seems like the trope of railroad fiction; a moment where the high railroad summit is packed with trains and the grizzled dispatcher has to ask a young cub engineer to pull off a move that, if it fails, will lock up the railroad for hours. And that is exactly how it went down. At the 2/3rds point, I had traffic building in Red Rock and Lehigh, the summit approaches. They were pretty plugged. To get trains out, I needed to run a bunch over the hill. To clear Red Rock for westbound moves, I needed to get Jude’s long […]

November 11, 2024

OpsLog – WAZU – 11/10/2024

f you are thinking that you already got posted from me this weekend for a Saturday show, you did. But now it’s Sunday and a big bunch of us train-freaks are over at Doc Andy’s, running on the WAZU. For once, I didn’t jump for the DS panel. One, I wanted to run some trains for once and two, some of my friends were going to need my burly brawn assistance to get an old lady up some stairs. Since I was on a short leash that day, I chose to run trains and see how it would play out. […]

November 28, 2024

OpsLog – LM&O – 11/27/2024

s usual, we are never sure how many people will come out for a night-before-Thanksgiving session. We’ve always underestimated our turnout. And this year, as in years past, you’ve shown up just how much you dislike your family and relatives by coming out for a good night of full ops. And as always, we are glad to have you. As John C’s photo shows below, we had a large number of club members (plus a couple of friends and family, a guest or two, and even our favorite den-mom) to run with us. So our overall perspective from the dispatchers’ […]

November 30, 2024

OpsLog – CT – 11/29/2024

t’s taken a long way to get here. Our HO B&O Chicago Terminal layout was promised to be a major attention-getter at our club, drawing a huge wave of HO guys into our membership. But then the clique lost enthusiasm and quit, leaving us with our own version of the I-4 eyesore, a big expensive thing nobody knew what to do with. Jim T worked on it, adding industries (possibly too many industries) to the line. Bob K helped him with scenery. But that ended with us having (for all practical purposes) a very long engine test track. Again, interest […]

December 2, 2024

OpsLog – HL – 12/1/2024

here are things I’m thankful for. For example, I’m thankful they detected the cancer before it hit a nearby nerve and spread through my body. And I’m thankful that when my ultralight engine failed on a steep takeoff within five hours of soloing, I didn’t panic – stick forward, get speed back, and glide down to the lake to kiss it with my pontoons. But my latest thanks goes to the fact that I didn’t push to run the Highland Line under TT&TO. Talk about a narrow shave with death. Up in the tower, I had my hands full. Host […]

December 9, 2024

OpsLog – WB -12/7/2024

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 […]