tuscarora – Page 4 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

September 22, 2023

OpsLog – TBL – 9/21/2023

ey, I like running trains with the guys. Operations is about playing a multi-participant game bigger than yourself. I love it. But it also means that, since I’m one of the founding members of ops, I get called on a lot. People don’t understand their timetables. Or their warrants. Or their freight waybills. There are accidents out of reach, whole train derailments, dead engines, stupid questions (yes, those DO exist). One moment, I’m in the cab, pondering my switching moves. The next, someone is tapping me on the shoulder. I get pulled out of it a lot. So tonight I […]

November 27, 2023

OpsLog – TBL – 11/26/2023

ell, it wasn’t the best ops session we’ve had on the Tuscarora. I’m gratified that a number of people drove long distances to be there (107 miles from St Augustine, 68 miles from Satellite Beach, and a drunken crawl in from Tampa at 85 miles). So a lot of people came a long way – I hope they enjoyed themselves. Jury is out for me. I don’t know where to start. So let’s use the blamethrower – what mistakes do I remember? The scheduled freight/switching crew was not well versed in switching (which is half his job). You know the […]

December 14, 2023

OpsLog – TBL – 12/13/2023

not-so-good solo run on the Tuscarora last night. The original plan was to run a session by myself before the club. But I just started a really good book and didn’t want to break away from it. Read for a while, went to the club, showed guests around, helped out here and there, and finally (about 9:30 when most people had gone home) I set up a session and ran the default position. The basic reason was that I’d just gotten my SW-7 back from the shop and wanted to make sure it ran well. I mean, one guy running. […]

December 21, 2023

OpsLog – TBL – 12/20/2023

uick post – tonight Steve played with the tower and had it crashing routinely, until it stopped crashing. After he left, I put the cars on and using an old sheet I’d stored in my locker some time ago, I ran a full session. Since I needed to test the tower, I did both leverman and freight engineer. What made it a pain was that to keep the aisle open, I had to run from the side (where the tower is usually bolted on). This meant that any uncoupling I had to do, I had to get out of my […]

December 30, 2023

OpsLog – TBL – 12/30/2023

eally, it was a terrible solo effort on the Tuscarora today. I didn’t have ANY tower malfunctions. And I didn’t have ANY derailments. Horrible. See, I figured that before I worked scenery (and since I had an entire Saturday afternoon at the club) I’d run lever testing and try to get it to fail. After about twenty fruitless minutes of this, I figured I should just run a session. At first I was just going to randomize cars but then I found an unused switchlist in the back and made it into an honest to goodness session. And I ran […]

January 21, 2024

OpsLog – TBL – 1/21/2024

short entry for a short session – our control problems continue on the Tuscarora Branch Line, which means I can’t trust it to operate in any manner and so I can’t invite people to drive hundreds of miles for a dud session. I only hope that Steve the engineering guy comes up with a solution. God, but I hate this constant on again / off again failure. My friend Greg came over to run with me (hey, we had movie-night lined up after, so not a total loss). We only managed to run half a session before the constant failures […]

February 26, 2024

OpsLog – TBL – 2/25/2024

uscarora has been inoperative for two months now. The interlocking started fritzing; I got the last good interlocking session on 12/30/2023 (Happy New Year!) and then a massive failure in a status run (1/21, aborted). So my electrical engineer reworked the cheater box so that I could run only turnouts, no interlocking effort. And that’s a pity, because that’s where the pike shines. Still, a basic session is better than no session and so my friend Greg came over for the day and we ran the way we did years back; a coal guy, a local guy and a lot […]

March 18, 2024

OpsLog – TBL – 03/17/2024

ight on the heels of working the Virginia SouthWestern (as detailed HERE) I boomered a job up north, taking the night train up to drop off the very next day in Tuscarora, my favorite stomping grounds. Apparently the tower has been down for maintenance issues over the last few months. Finally the interlocking has reopened (or so the head maintainer told me) – it’s run only one day so far under limited operations (with the mines closed, as detailed HERE). With Tuscarora down, all trains have been picking up orders elsewhere – the tower temporarily lost its train order station […]