operations

June 26, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O – 6/25/2025

was in a pretty mellow mood when I got to the club Wednesday. It might have been because all morning I’d been moving boxes of books (just like cubes of wood, but with writing, not rings, inside their slices) until noon or so, in the hot Florida sun. I’d had a beer at dinner and settled in the back desk to set up the clocks and computer and run the railroad. I don’t know if that explains my easy-going nature that night, and I have no explanation why the rest of you were all so… tetchy. We have that phrase, […]
July 24, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O – 7/23/2025

ell, that was satisfying. We got out a solid session last night. Everyone knew what to do to set up. Pre-brief was quick. The clock started and (I’m happy to say) we didn’t get a single LNER (not an English railroad company but a line error on the clock when the system shorts hard). Outside of one helix delay, everything ran fairly smooth. I don’t know about you lugs, but I had a pretty enjoyable time. A couple of real notable events. I didn’t get ANY calls for help to the dispatcher over the radio. Crews really did “work it […]
July 28, 2025

OpsLog – WAZU – 7/27/2025

ne of the rockier sessions on the WAZU, still mostly on time but with rage and thunder to get us there. I still had fun, as did most of the other operators. Andy always puts on a good show and great lunch – I eat better than at home. I had the dispatcher’s seat (third time in a week) and the session started out well. Trains were rolling on their times and making their stops. Andy’s new system of posted turnout IDs made it easy to get the remote trains across the line (still, I was only diverging them when […]
August 3, 2025

OpsLog – TBL – 8/2/2025

nlike the last ops session I was at (which was, to no fault of the host, like a fight with cavalry lances in a shit house at midnight), the more compact, less attended session on the diminutive Tuscarora Branch Line was quite a success. I’d been planning on doing a test-run session since May (when we shut down the line to work on the river, almost done yet inexplicably not included in the accompanying photographs). Now that the river is mostly finished and looking somewhat better than plywood, we finally got a chance to use the layout in the way […]
August 10, 2025

OpsLog – OSMR – 8/9/2025

sister club to ours, the Orlando Society of Model Railroaders, decided they are going to give ops another try (they’d done it once but life got in the way). So Tom, one of our former members, scouted out our ops, took careful notes and carried them back to incorporate into their setting. And then he was nice enough to invite us over to run on the inaugural. I’ll mention that this was going to make for a long day for a number of our crew – we already had a planned session at our own club at 7pm. If we […]
August 25, 2025

OpsLog – WAZU – 8/24/2025

o we had a wonderful rainy-day run on the WAZU in the Pacific Northwest. It started off with Doc Andy attempting to one-up Bob Gross’s legendary lunches with his own personal Chef, Philippe “Bon-bon” Klauck, who provided us with a pulled-pork lunch with all the fixing, and homemade ice cream for the debrief. Used to be that I’d toss out a couple of sacks of oreos. Now, on the Tuscarora, I point to the club galley area and remind operators that everything’s a dollar. So yes, that culinary performance upstaged everything. Hard to think how we could top lunch.   […]
August 29, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O – 8/27/2025

here is a story I read years ago. Deathrow. On one side of the aisle, there is a brute of a man, stupid and blunt. On the other, “The Professor”, an intelligent yet ruthless killer. Tonight, the Professor is going to the chair. A priest stands clear of the bars between the cells, administering to the doomed man’s needs. But the Professor ignores him, facing the far wall, pushing against it, stopping, pushing, stopping. Ignored, the priest asks him why he is doing that. The Professor tells him that he cannot press through the wall because his molecules are colliding […]
September 25, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O – 9/24/2025

ig John strode towards his idling units, his boots crunching on the mix of cinders and coal, the tinny towers of Champion Mine thrusting into the narrow sliver of post-midnight stars. He clambered aboard his lead NS unit, checking brake pressure to the long cut of loaded hoppers strung behind his four road engines. As he pumped off the brakes, he could hear the cars behind him groan as they eased down the minor slope, bunching against his lashup. He ignored this as he worked his radio, getting a warrant from the dispatcher. Upslope, he could see the lights of […]
September 29, 2025

OpsLog – WAZU – 9/28/2025

ne thing I’ve finally learned: There are places you shouldn’t jam coal into. I suppose a qualifier is in order here. Last LM&O session, I passed two hopper trains (loads and empties) on the smallest siding we have (way up in Harris Glen, the mountaintop where eagles soar and swamis meditate). I think we’ve done it before – if both coal movements head out at session-start, it’s natural they will meet there. But coal hoppers are tippy, the grade is steep, and the reach long. If anything goes wrong there, if a saw-by is needed, it goes sideways fast. But […]