At the throttle

Train Blog

February 5, 2025

OpsLog – YVRR – 2/4/2025

he last time (a week or so ago) I was supposed to run on Jack Ferguson’s nifty little Yosemite Valley Railroad, I was at the dealership and found out that my car was a road-surface Hindenburg (fuel was leaking from a defective pump). So we called that one off. This was our reschedule. Now, Jack’s railroad is a nifty little runner, unitracked and smooth running. It’s got a full loop and ops are essentially a train coming onto the line (like my MT-1) and eventually leaving (like my EM-2 (the PeeDee)). There is some yard work, a pair of locals, […]
February 2, 2025

OpsLog – TBL – 2/1/2025

ecided on this nice open weekend to head over to the club for a quiet solo run of the Tuscarora Branch Line. The wife came along to read in the back (that’s what she said, anyway) and Pete came out, and later, Mike. So that became a bit distracting. We were either talking or putting run-through, time-jump units on the line. I was trying to run the tower and the scheduled jobs (and didn’t do very well with either). JB and Pete took a mess of pictures. So yes, some blunders on my part. The worst goof was setting out […]
January 23, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O – 1/22/2025

o I was lucky to make it at all to the session tonight. After attending to “family issues” (the same way the Titanic’s sinking was noted as “shipping concerns”) I got there windblown and frozen with a half-hour to spare. I’d signed up for ore loads east and ore loads east it was going to be. On the dispatcher desks were Phil and Pete, Phil for a return visit to bedlam and Pete as a newbie DS. Okay, since I didn’t have time to think this out, giving Phil a five minute clinic on how my dispatcher panel works was […]
January 13, 2025

ShowLog – 1-(11,12)-2025 – Deland

f you want to know what it feels like to be a astronaut flying away from Earth, into deep space, try getting to the Deland Fairgrounds at 5:30 AM. I just sat in my car and sighed, thinking my lofty thoughts. One thought – I sure overestimated my travel time. Another thought – I wish I’d brought a book. We got good attendance for setup, other than the Polish Precision Rifle Drill Team performance. You see, it’s quite simple. Two people hold the layout in place. Four people, christened One, Two, Three and Four each take a called-out leg type […]
January 13, 2025

OpsLog – P&VW – 1/9/2025

hat a difference forty-five minutes of traffic, a bunch of socializing and a big spaghetti dinner makes. We’d finished the Virginia Southwestern in the late afternoon. It had been a long day. And we made it even longer with a second operations go-round, this time on Tom Wilson’s wonderful Pittsburgh & West Virginia. We all told train stories and then while Tom went over train things in the layout room, I retired to some little granddaughter’s cute pink bedroom (some dispatcher’s office that was. There wasn’t even a spittoon) to do my thing. I could hear Tom’s wife chatting with […]
January 13, 2025

OpsLog – VSW – 1/9/2025

usy weekend for me. The Protorails convention is going on but I cannot attend since I’ll be managing a two day display setup of our sectional layout in Deland. But as part of the convention, they sold spots on both the Virginia Southwestern and the Pittburgh & West Virginia. I ended up to getting invited to a double dose of dispatching, running the railroads from back rooms, sight unseen – ignore the man behind the curtain. And first up; John Wilkes’ VSW. I gotta say that I love this railroad (or rather, two railroads, the L&N (the busy stressful line) […]
January 3, 2025

OpsLog – TC – 1/1/2025

o I’m standing under a post-midnight sky, brilliant with summer stars. Crickets are chirping. Bats flutter past. You might imagine I can smell dew-laden grass but no, my nose is numb from sulfuric diesel fumes, radiating from the fuel distributor Atlantic Coast Line uses to refuel engines out here in the ass end of nowhere. I’m pumping gallon after gallon into my Dash-9. Yes, the prior engineer was trying to look goody-goody to railroad management, running the Tidewater late to up his tonnage. He brought the unit in after midnight, on fumes, like a teenager with his dad’s car. I […]
January 1, 2025

OpsLog – TBL – 12/30/2024

y final blog post for the year, and a model train operations one. We just squeaked this in, last minute. Club president Shannon asked for a quiet little puzzler (he came to a six-person session in September and got smoked). So we slipped over to the club in the waning days of the year for a quiet little to-do. Since Shannon is building a lengthened version of this, he wants to see how the town of Tuscarora does business. When his layout is up, it’s going to put mine to shame. Anyway, running more like Greg and I did in […]
December 23, 2024

OpsLog – WAZU – 12/22/2024

o last week I had RSV (now everyone who knows me and was around me is giving me the stink eye). Felt pretty bad at the high water mark (lung water, that is). So now I’m in the recovery mode but the doctor who saw me in the ER said if I don’t get better in a day or so, I gotta come back to avoid it turning into Pneumonia. Well, shit. But I think I developed a sure-fire cure.   First, go to a doctors clinic (well, Doc Andy is a veterinarian, but a damn good one). Makes sure […]
December 20, 2024

OpsLog – LM&O – 12/18/2024

really wanted to run trains on this eighteenth of December session. At our Just Run Trains session, I’d run the MT ores over the hill. Having heard so many sad epics of problems, I wanted to see if they were as troublesome of trucks as I’d been told. Also, since Leonard and Zeus were splitting the dispatching, I finally could be out on the road. And since I was recovering from a flu, I would wear a mask. There are too many crews who would be looking for the “Dispatcher in the Roundhouse” and administer a beat down if given […]