train – Page 7 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

January 26, 2023

OpsLog – LM&O – 1/26/2023

ourteen and a half hours. A lot can happen in fourteen and a half hours. And this was in 10:1 clock time, so that was (in real time) just under an hour and a half. That’s how long number 902, the Shelfton Local, had to wait to get a warrant from a newbie dispatcher (yeah, Steve H, your humiliation begins. All newly minted DS-Deskers get it). And my order would have been one checkbox. Go to Shelfton. Man, it’s what, four real-feet away? Leave the yard, cross over, go into the cutoff. (And to think – I’m the guy who […]

February 23, 2023

OpsLog – LM&O – 2/22/2023

teve Hooper is going to hate reading this, but tonight we ran every train (freights, passengers, and even some units trains and extras) and we ran it pretty much on time. Sorry, Steve. When I took the hot seat tonight, I felt a lot of pressure to get this session down right. After all, the last one was a shambles (sorry again, Steve). We had to show that the entire thing could come together and run like a true railroad. This was doubly important because we were using our new freight flows from Nazareth. Yeah, so, no pressure but it’s […]

March 18, 2023

OpsLog – CSX Taft – 03/17/2023

y order of the dispatcher, I’d dismounted from my CSX switch engine and walked down the industrial siding. A flat car was being worked by a crew off a remote loading dock. Then an off-spot box car. And then the center of the crisis, an industrial loading dock. At it sat a boxcar and a reefer, the latter’s refrigerator engine running with nobody home to unload it. The Brotherhood of Knuckledraggers 107 had walked off the job. And worried about the time this car could run off it’s internal tanks, the railroad had set me down to check it out. […]

March 20, 2023

OpsLog – WAZU – 3/19/2023

ith a combination of sweet-talking and blackmail, I managed to get Kyle to take the DS seat on the WAZU Line and fly into the maelstrom of mother-may-I, controlling the sprawling, confusing, and statically-cracking division. Me, I got to run trains (which I do every couple of months). So, with my new-found freedom, I busted out of Hinkle Yard (four fast-minutes early; you’d think Yardmaster Sparky was having a baby; such screaming). It was a quick run to Umatilla and after some quick switching, a quicker run down to Walla Walla. And that was fun – a long siding with […]

March 26, 2023

OpsLog – FEC – 3/25/2023

ame into the yard shed for the Florida East Coast today, looking to improve running the Trim job (which I did a lukewarm effort on last time). Now was my chance. I’d show them. I’d show them all… Just at the end of the off-spot track, I noticed an engine and what looked like a wreck train. When I asked Ken about it, he glanced at the dispatcher (Doug) and shushed me with a wink. Ah hah. Someone was getting a surprise. So the first part of this OpsLog deals with the Trim (which is a job that hostels engines […]

April 2, 2023

ShowLog – Deland – 4/1/2023

hat a horrifically bad train show! I woke up feeling good about going to a train show after all my missed-events. But then Sparky got pulled over while pulling the trailer and the cop demanded a roadside inspection and wrote us up for five infractions. And First Coast club took half our layout space! And then set up took two hours – how many ways can we put the layout together in wrong order? By the time it was up, attendees were standing around our build-area, silently watching like ghouls as we screamed at each other. After that, there was […]

May 25, 2023

OpsLog – LM&O – 5/24/2023

hey came from beyond high orbits, disk-like vessels that slid into the atmosphere, nudging past Chinese spy balloons, descending over an unsuspecting America. On their steel underbellies, access ports irised open and the cold muzzles of alien devices slid forth, tracking along the faint railline running across the eastern mountains. These were no deathrays, no, nor atomizers or any one of traditional alien destructo-beams. These were capture rays, used to pluck fishermen out of rowboats and yahoos out of cornfields. The aliens had come with capture on their vast, cool, unsympathetic minds. Their plans were carefully considered. The first beam […]

May 26, 2023

On Sheet – TimeFable

lot of layout owners, when they start setting up for ops, build a timetable. Sure, it’s fun since now all those trains have numbers, go places, do things. But is it necessary? Yes, a timetable can allow you to make sure your flow works, that there are enough sidings for trains to meet, do work and whatnot. You can build sequential operations out of a timetable. And, of course, you can hang it on the wall and smile at it. But if you are running your railroad under warrants, CTC (centralized traffic control, i.e. with signals) or mother-may-I (verbal orders […]

June 4, 2023

OpsLog – WBRR – 06/03/2023

he teletype was idly clicking a slow message, a new dispatcher getting an OS report from Navajo down the line about a train coming east. Since I’m at Dulce, I shouldn’t even see that train – he’ll swing off my line at Ute Junction and head to the other division, through Placerville and Dolores. But really, it’s not my problem. I’m checking over the paperwork of a westbound peddler train standing in my station, ready to depart. Yes, it looked good. I don’t remember what pulled me away from my Dulce job. With long arms and a sneaky manner, I […]

June 15, 2023

OpsLog – LM&O – 06/14/2023

ight has fallen and the chill has sunk in between the low Zanesville hills. The auto plant is humming as is the furniture factory (a pity since the local never showed up today). And me? I’m stuck in this rotting tower, most of the levers out of service, nothing but a second story train order office. Looking west, I suddenly see a headlight stabbing out of Below Notman tunnel. I check the watch – 7:30 PM. That means… to the east, the low form of a drag freight comes around the raised hillock under the GM plant. I lift up […]