train – Page 3 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

July 4, 2021

OpsLog – TBL – 07/03/2021

here is something quite unique about the Tuscarora Branch Line. Granted, it’s a small layout, only 2×4. But when Greg and I were doing our two-person session yesterday, it was like we were connected to a huge layout, managing a single town as the local switched and coal hoppers paraded past. Good session, too. Everything ran perfect. I think we had one derailment that might have been rough uncoupling. As far as the on-the-ground action, we had quite a session. First off, it seemed that the railroad had let a backlog of empty hoppers build up to the east – […]

August 23, 2021

OpsLog – L&M – 8/14/2021

hat’s the worst thing you can hear when you are a dispatcher on John Wilkes’ L&M? Headlights? Ha. No. No, it’s when you are hanging around at 10am waiting for your ride-guy to show up and you get a call from another person attending today’s session. “Hey, Robert, where are you? We’re ready to start?” Ready to start? Start time was 10am? I thought it was noon! And it’s in Polk City, something like forty miles away. We’re in Orlando and haven’t even hit the road yet! What a way to not run a railroad. So I called my ride-share […]

August 26, 2021

OpsLog – LM&O – 08/25/2021

here are those days where ops doesn’t seem worth it. I knew there was going to be problems when most of the club officers didn’t show up. That means I’m the sole host. I had to get everything ready and was pretty busy, setting up the computer and getting the clocks running (and bringing the phones back online, since we are evidently a club that laughs at death). Since most of the trains were signed up for, I grabbed helpers out of Calypso. Got Dusty Klauck on the front end of 223 and up the hill we went. While Bob […]

September 21, 2021

OpsLog – TBL – 9/20/2021

ery busy night at the club. First there was the work session that went on until 8pm – we worked elements of Pittsburgh, fixed two turnouts, argued about signposts (bit one off in a dare – really), and then designed the steel mill trackage. After all that, everyone left and so I pulled out my Tuscarora Microlayout and had a coal session. Why? Well, we’re going to have a live session and I’m still working out the card method that drives the coal moves. As noted in earlier blogs, an engineer pointed out that coal felt meaningless – it was […]

October 3, 2021

ShowLog – Deland – 10/2/2021

his show had all the earmarks of a disaster. First off the club president was out of town and the tech officer was on an effing boat. I had a few old sweats and a buncha newbies. Day of load, we discovered that the trailer registration was out of date (I fixed that with a couple of quick calls). Day of show, I stopped over at Krispy Kreem to pick up donuts for the crew. Their donut machine was broken and all they had were three dozen donuts that nobody wanted (think about that for a minute – these were […]

October 5, 2021

OpsLog – TBL – 10/4/2021

t was a rough day and a rough night at the club. I worked on the gravel road outside (doing convict labor) and then traced wires in the hideous mess under Zanesville. And after all that, I wanted to run my own session on the Tuscarora, just the coal job testing out the new tally sheets. And I’d use my SW-7 switched to make sure it was all ready for my clinic/ops session next week. And of course, the chip blew. So I can make the bell and horn works, and the engine idles. But you get headlights on both […]

October 28, 2021

OpsLog – LM&O – 10/28/2021

eft-seating it in a pair of beat up old C&NW units, rattling down through the spiral tunnel below Harris Glen, running to Lehigh and a possible meet. I’m conducting for a young scout, Aryon. The kid’s got a steady throttle hand and is drifting the helpers down to Calypso nice and easy. The club’s full of people tonight – visitors, a group of boy scouts, lots of people. Most of them have been put on trains as engineers, the guys giving up their throttles to allow newbies to realize that trains are more than just circles of tracks. Trains are […]

November 19, 2021

OpsLog – TBL – 11/19/2021

ad to go out to the club and wait for the alarm guy so I decided, since I haven’t run since thousands of people required my assistance for every little thing, I’d run a switching session on the Tuscarora. And to make it fun, I’d run the full tower (using signals) too! The main thing was to see how my SW-7 would work. Right before the NMRA convention the chip croaked (three weeks out of warranty). I originally had a Paragon 3 sound decoder installed (it’s what it came with). New ones are shipping with 4s – Craig LeVasseur noted […]

December 16, 2021

OpsLog – LM&O – 12/15/2021

ast time we did ops, we got a couple of people to attend and ran a handful of early trains. I groused about it in the blog and nobody liked that move either. This time we decided to pick up at 6am (a quarter of the way into the session) and just run the balance. And now EVERYONE showed up and the layout was jammed. Hopefully you’ll like the blog. So yes, it was a pile on. We ran the rest of the trains, all the passengers (who were probably pissed at the LM&O’s excuses for the horrible service delays […]

December 20, 2021

OpsLog – Wazu – 12/19/2021

ell, we partied like it was 2010 today. By that, I mean we had a room full of enthusiastic operators in a large home (well, clinic) layout, we ran everything and most of the people stayed for the end. Just like our club used to do things. It was an interesting session – I’ve been dispatching at Andy’s for years (across three or four layouts). The Wazu is by far the best, a loose simulation of the UP line from Spokane to Portland. And for this session, I pulled out my new dispatcher program (focused more on being a true […]