Train Blog
June 27, 2024
ur group seems to form great teams of solid operators. A lot of layouts ask for us, even confirm that we can make it before announcing a session. Among other places that request us, there are the Virginia SouthWestern, the West Virginia Northern, the Florida East Coast and the Western Bay. It’s a shame that if we did not actually build and maintain the Leigh, Monongahela & Ohio we probably wouldn’t have been invited at all. I mean, look at last night’s session. First off, there was all the dramas before the clock even went hot. I actually approved of […]
June 23, 2024
read a lot of books. In fact, I’ve read all the Hornblower novels. Even read the Patrick O’Brian novels about a British expedition that rounds Cape Horn with its endless pounding storms. And I didn’t get the heaving and scurvy of that passage in the op session, but I got the damn rain! I was at the dispatcher’s desk in the “command” shed, along with the missus and the Farnhams. In the other shed, we had a full house and a heavy schedule. And we might as well have been ships in a storm-tossed formation, for all the chance of […]
June 21, 2024
ne of the problems we faced on our club layout is staffing up trains and running everything. On a home layout, that really isn’t a problem. If you wish to do it this way, you can tie in a firm understand with your operators that – outside of special cases – you stay until the session is over. And you should attend a debrief (the owner has put a great deal of effort into a session and wants to hear, good and bad, how it went). I was at a session last year where some old duffer decided, in mid-session, […]
June 17, 2024
kay, so I head-oned a train today. Yup, I admit it. I was trying to run the lumberjack and got a little distracted. I was trying to meet a train at Cheney, worried about getting out of his way since his engine had a camera taped on the nose and the operator was in the other room, doing a good job of looking like a misguided torpedo as he raced towards the fouling point I was still crossing. My entry was jarring, what with the short detector buzzing at crotch level, and the chorus of “Who’s on a switch!” rising […]
June 14, 2024
he WAZU was our problem home layout. The owner wanted it to be modern high-speed rail service between Seattle and Portland – big trains running fast on open tracks. But whenever we did it, we quickly ended up with snarls on the railroad and the radios making everyone’s ears bleed. Of course, then the crews were having to shout at each other to be heard over the radio noise. Not good. And the owner did not want to install phones. We’ve done simple mother-may-I. Then we tried warrants. Each time we got some combination of booming radios and delayed trains. […]
June 13, 2024
uick blog for a quick session – Greg and I decided to run a fast one to test out the tower on a mid-day Wednesday (ah, the joy of retirement). And that’s why I found myself, with my operator on the drive over, discovering that the tower was not working. It was that fault 16 nonsense again, but other levers in that range would trigger it. Had chief engineer Steve on the line, weeping and crying at him, when it suddenly stopped and ran right as rain. Bullet proof. I can’t explain it. So Greg showed up and we ran […]
June 9, 2024
itting in my muggy dispatcher’s office in Denver, the windows open and a fan chattering on the desk, I can only imagine what it’s like in flat, faraway, hellish Navajo in June as the telegraph slowly confesses that 391 has puffed into town an hour the hot side of noon. Easy to imagine the dozen or so passengers stumbling out of their hellishly hot combine, to stagger over the mainline rails to the little cantina while the steamer uncouples off the front end and idles over to the tank to fill its empty boiler. The passengers drink their warm beer […]
June 7, 2024
o being an officer, a member of several committees and the senior club member has its drawbacks. Last club night, I had to inspect erosion on our entry culvert, jimmy the lock of a car, take minutes for the monthly meeting, deal with an upset member, repair a turnout, replace tumble-barriers under the layout, pick up all the dead cockroaches I found under there, issue a new club key and go over the alarm system, crush cans, fix a broken phone, deal with an upset member again, help restore a locomotive address, replace paper towels in the bathroom, deal with […]
May 26, 2024
uite a day over at the Virginia SouthWestern. It was great to have four members there – all in our yellow shirts! we looked like some sort of Japanese anime super-group – “N-Trak Avengers ASSEMBLE!” Also present were two old-time members, Bob M and Frankie Z. Good to see the old group reformed, ready to show these HO guys how we do things! Kinda a bit of a bracer, to sit in the L&N hotseat and get ready to do dispatcher magic. So much is weighing on this – if I mess up, everyone will know (so much for that […]
May 23, 2024
o we had a crazy session last night – all sorts of delays. John C had to pry a dead bird out of Greg W’s grill (no wonder he was thinking about chicken for dinner the long drive out). And then Shannon and I had to deal with club business – once the air was cleared, we could get on with Zach B’s threats (pre-brief) and get down to the business of running trains. And for that, let me set the scene for the opening hour. Imagine Pete dressed in a dapper suit, smoking a high-brand cigarette. He’s in the […]