At the throttle

Train Blog

January 27, 2023

On Sheet – Back to Basics

o you might have read about our crazy op session the other night (detailed and derailed HERE). So it was a tough night – I ran around sweating like a pig, even though my only job (the Shelfton Turn) ran ten feet out, switched in one quick runaround to hit all the trailing turnouts, dropped and came back in to work a short branch run to Iron City Brewery. Total wait time – one and a half hours. Total running time – thirty minutes. Not such a good night. But club fun night wasn’t over. I stayed until 11pm so […]
January 26, 2023

OpsLog – LM&O – 1/26/2023

ourteen and a half hours. A lot can happen in fourteen and a half hours. And this was in 10:1 clock time, so that was (in real time) just under an hour and a half. That’s how long number 902, the Shelfton Local, had to wait to get a warrant from a newbie dispatcher (yeah, Steve H, your humiliation begins. All newly minted DS-Deskers get it). And my order would have been one checkbox. Go to Shelfton. Man, it’s what, four real-feet away? Leave the yard, cross over, go into the cutoff. (And to think – I’m the guy who […]
January 22, 2023

OpsLog – TBL – 1/21/2023

fter a long weekend at a train convention (and two weeks of ensuing covid isolation) I was able to return to duty on the Tuscarora. The railroad surgeon cleared me for service. And back I went to the dispatcher’s desk. Also on duty was Kyle (on interlocking), his father Phil (on Scheduled trains) and Greg (on Coal). Yes, so we had a rusty lever-thrower, a rookie on the timetable and a coal guy who forgot how the tally sheet worked. I guess that’s why we ran four hours on the session. Still, Phil (even though he is a model railroader, […]
January 20, 2023

On Sheet – Broken Coupler

o we had a show. But I had covid. I’d have to miss it. Turns  out we suffered a crisis during the load and, even though I was thinking of early-to-bed, I had to call the membership and warn them. This turned into a problem solving effort. The details of what happened are outlined HERE. Read ’em and weep. The point of that sob story is the point of a train club. When it’s just you with a 4×8 in the basement, you just work on it when you feel like it. But when you join a club, a lot […]
January 19, 2023

ShowLog – Deland – 1/(14&15)/2023

et’s be up front about this. I’m one of those media guys who is reporting on something I did not attend. Two shows ago, I was recovering from surgery in the hospital. Last time (the fall show) we had a hurricane and got cancelled. And this time, I got Covid (likely from CovidRails the weekend before). And I wore a mask and everything. Even through I’m not showing symptoms anymore, I’m still hot and still staying clear. But it wasn’t like I wasn’t involved. Steve Raiford had set everything up. We had crews marked up and superintendents outlined. Even sidelined, […]
January 13, 2023

On Sheet – Call me!

ou might remember the cookie story from a few OpsLogs ago – about how a crew finished up and went off duty and my entire north end of my railroad was waiting for him to reappear (as the paperwork stated) – it’s right HERE. Yeah, two guys stood in sidings at either end of my missing wack-a-mole, waiting 15 real minutes until he sauntered past with a cookie – munch munch munch. Here’s the deal – in my many years (two decades) of dispatching, if there is one things crews do that drive me nuts – it’s not calling the […]
January 10, 2023

OpsLog – P&WV – 1/5/2023

o the second half of Ops Day (which started on the VSW) resumed one hour of driving later, following a large Italian dinner graciously provided by our hosts. And the thing is, after a two hour trip over from their east-coast accommodations, four-five hours of heavy ops on Wilke’s coal line, another hour and a good meal, the crews were a bit loggy. Our ops were not the best. Everyone was just tired. I was tucked in the back room on the dispatcher panel, working through my warrants (I wrote eighty-ninety warrants overall that day across nine hours of ops). […]
January 10, 2023

OpsLog – VSW – 1/5/2023

irst session of the new year, a double header that started at John Wilke’s Virginia & SouthWestern (this was an informal ops session linked indirectly to ProtoRails 2023 in Cocoa Beach). And as usual, I got an invitation to bring my dispatching mojo to the session, to keep things running and entertainment (and speeds) high. And in that, I was mostly successful. So I ran the heavy panel (the L&N) while a visitor named Paul ran the easier Southern Railroad. Fortunately the CTC board (used to control the shared trackage at Edison Jct and Goodbee) was working top-notch this time […]
December 31, 2022

OpsLog – TBL – 12/30/2022

nless someone passes out and a person waves a throttle around and shouts, “Is there a model train operator in the house?”, this was my last session for my busy 2022. We had a quiet Friday afternoon session over at the clubhouse, just a couple of good friends and myself running the Tuscarora. The standing rule was (since there is a bit of a demand for the newly reprogrammed tower) is that after eight hours, engineers can swap out with tower operators. And it worked out well; the coal guy switched out with the tower and positions stabilized for the […]
December 30, 2022

On Sheet- Gilding someone else’s parachute

or the last twenty years of my career, I worked for a transportation company that is colored purple. Yes, those guys. And I really loved it. I was a “meh” of a coder but when I got into management, I shined. I was a great team lead and process guy. We got the team running on all cylinders by the time I retired. I must have done well – I had about a hundred people at my retirement party and it went on all afternoon. One of the things our testing department did (which I couldn’t stand) was the “morning […]