Train Blog
September 12, 2025
o it was going to be a busy day – up at 7am. A run over to TRF Hobbies in Melbourne to pick up a gift card for the club Christmas Party. Lunch somewhere (McDonalds, it turned out, but nice anyway). And that evening, I’d have to open the club for the HO committee because nobody’s bothered to get a key (that will change). Turns out while I was there, I mopped, swapped out a dead overhead light and cleaned the toilet bowl (ugh. Some of you need to fit sights on your peters for better aiming). So with all […]
September 8, 2025
atience, or forbearance, is the ability to endure difficult or undesired long-term circumstances. Patience involves perseverance or tolerance in the face of delay, provocation, or stress without responding negatively, such as reacting with disrespect or anger. Patience is also used to refer to the character trait of being disciplined and steadfast. I had a bad session on the Tuscarora the other night. It was rainy and a couple of the guys didn’t show up. To be honest, the guy running the scheduled train lost interest in slow and steady train handling, watching for signals and (even when he saw they […]
September 7, 2025
kay, this one is a tough one to write. This was quite possibly the worst session on record. This one ties that “fault 16” session from years ago. Okay, without naming names: What went wrong? It was pouring rain (in buckets) so everyone was wet and uncomfortable to start. The person we’d organized the session for didn’t make it. One person was a little lax in attention (sorry to call this out) and another faded near the end. The entire session seemed to crater. At the mid-afternoon point, I asked if they wanted to call it – the enthusiasm seemed […]
September 3, 2025
??? So, maybe it was the OpsLog title that cued you, Tusk Valley? Or the picture of Espee power working East Tuscarora with one of those signature brown boxcars sitting at door 1 of the freight house? Are you honestly saying that one of the world’s smallest layouts has a new ops location – again? So first there was Tuscarora (officially Tuscarora Branch Line). That was all Pennsy stuff for the first year we ran it. Then it did a cameo as Tusk Hill (an English Midland’s railroad). And then a college kid brought in Tusk Coast (which is the ACL line running down […]
August 29, 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 […]
August 25, 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 24, 2025
hen you die and Saint Peter says to you, “Hey, when were you happiest down there?” You’re gonna say, “Well, it was okay the day I got married, and I didn’t much mind the day I first fell in love. But seein’ the sky with the Great Waldo Pepper, that beats ’em all.” -The Great Waldo Pepper (1975) Personally, my own end-life reflections would turn to all the many moments model trains and their operations have given me. There have been soaring successes and comical pratfalls. And here’s a new one: I’m standing out in the back yard of Ken […]
August 19, 2025
t’s nice, after all the shit of last week, all the backstabbing pettiness, that Zeus took time off from between-classes time to push me to sponsor a session of Tusk Coast (Tuscarora with ACL equipment). This time, we figured that we’d add in the Interstate Railroad, running presumably on some sort of trackage rights, down from their lofty North Carolina peaks to the ACL mainline. What made maters more interesting was that it was our fourth new-version run of seasonal weather events – winter, specifically – and snow was forecast up in the high ridges above Westly. So to start, […]
August 11, 2025
he only real problem of engaging in two operation sessions (one with the Orlando Society of Model Railroaders) and the second a Saturday Night Session, is the number of husband points it costs me (just wrote a check for 500,000 points). But it was worth it. I wasn’t sure how many we’d get for a standard session on a Saturday night. A lot of us were still dragging from the three-and-a-half hour session we’d just gotten through. So there we were at Culvers, sucking down food and rebuilding our energy. And to my amazement, more members came, and more, until […]
August 10, 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 […]