trak

July 25, 2019

OpsLog – LM&O – 07/24/2019

am in the waning days of my career, but I’m still needed it seems. Had a kid in my team who has spent two days inert because the people he needs in another team are out of the office. Finally he came in today and I marched him right down to their manager (whom I’m friends with). Tossed some intros, told her about our missing SMEs, asked for help. She smiled. “Oh, yeah, I can get someone on that right away.” Problem solved. Deadlock broken. I’m pretty proud of my problem-solving abilities, and it stuck with me tonight as I […]
November 26, 2020

OpsLog – LM&O – 11/25/2020

t seems that Geep-9 of mine roams around like some sort of Flying Dutchman. A week ago, I was riding it back and forth through Tuscarora, dragging coal one way and dust the other, pretty amazing since we’re in Pennsylvania and it’s a Southern Pacific unit. Now I’m eighty miles north, up in Martin Yard, rolling down track 9 with engines and a caboose, getting ready to pick up my cut off 1 and head over to Mingo Jct. 927 is holding on track 2, ready to roll, but he’s waiting for a silver bullet to go by on the […]
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 […]
March 9, 2023

OpsLog – LM&O – 3/8/2023

t was an interesting session at the club tonight. Since my goatee glue isn’t dry yet and excessive talking might make it fall into my lap (dire consistences abound), I turned the dispatcher job over to young Jason (I still worked the computer display and reviewed all outbound warrants for correctness and homicidal omissions).  But he did pretty good – once I get him checked out on the panel, I’ll cup him like a little bird and let him fly, fly, fly… …and I can imagine the other members loading birdshot. But overall, Jason did fine. We did have a […]
March 23, 2023

OpsLog – LM&O – 3/23/2023

kay, let’s break down the disasters into two primary events. The Dispatcher Panel: There is a bug somewhere (I think it comes from double-clicking someplace you shouldn’t). It crashes the program. I never see it. Bob Martin used to get it maybe once in every other session. Cub dispatcher Steve got it about five times tonight. That meant we had to reset the board and try to remember where the trains were. It also threw off Steve’s careful lineup of warrants (he’d figured the first four hours of issued warrants before the session started). But then again, no plan survives […]