Train Blog
January 28, 2021
aybe because we had a lot of familiar faces show up. Or maybe because everyone brought all the things we needed for a good session. Or maybe because the Zanesville Local only had one car to spot. But it was a great night on the LM&O. With Cody on the DS board and Nick in the yard, the railroad organizational staffing was rock solid. Even the newbies (like Braden and his Dad) came prepared, having studied Silver Bullet Two’s timetable and walked the layout, getting a good understanding of what they would be doing. That works for me, since instead […]
January 17, 2021
was rolling out of Easton on 613 in the early evening, having spotted the day’s final cars. Gave two toots to the line of glowing windows along the tower’s second floor, acknowledging the green boards I had back to Tuscarora. Ben was doing a bang-up job as the new towerman. Better than I was doing as an engineer on the Easton Turn, it seemed. I only got five miles when I realized I’d missed picking up a car. Called the dispatcher on the callbox for a quick return to pick up a pennsy box. We all have our off nights. […]
January 7, 2021
he two GP-9s of the Mingo Jct Turn rumbled out of Martin Yard at 2am. I knew we had a lot to pull from the industries since nobody ran locals last time and the spurs were packed. I guess that’s why I got assigned extra crew on this run (namely, Tom and his son Braden, who really knew how to handle trains well). Braden had expressed interest in operations and I told him he was getting it in spades tonight – we had a very tricky run. Lots of switching and lots of puzzles. But the father and son team […]
December 24, 2020
Note: This account was provided by Cody Case, after I had a brush with a Covid zombie and am now in the two-week penalty box. The show went on anyway (while I sat in my dark den and web regretful tears). But even though everyone screwed up, when I met them outside to pick up my PC, everyone was jubilant from the session. All photos Mike Anderson eased into the dispatcher seat just as Frank offered to give it a try. “What could go wrong? There are just a few of us here tonight.” So, I grabbed some power and […]
December 13, 2020
his was a ground breaker session on the Tuscarora – the first run of the interlocking lever system, mounted in the mostly-sceniced tower. Every ounce of effort on this entire railroad, every coding step, all led to this event. And it was a blast. My dispatcher Greg was running at a steady clip, not rushing me at all. And most of the routing I’d practiced in my testing simulator. The only thing I wasn’t sure about was the initial drill effort (where the train from Martin gets classified) and the actual switching around the industrial areas. As it stood, the […]
November 26, 2020
t seems that Geep-9 of mine roams around like some sort of Flying Dutchman. A week ago, I was riding it back and forth through Tuscarora, dragging coal one way and dust the other, pretty amazing since we’re in Pennsylvania and it’s a Southern Pacific unit. Now I’m eighty miles north, up in Martin Yard, rolling down track 9 with engines and a caboose, getting ready to pick up my cut off 1 and head over to Mingo Jct. 927 is holding on track 2, ready to roll, but he’s waiting for a silver bullet to go by on the […]
November 22, 2020
ell, this time, I screwed up. I was running coal extras. My first run, I rolled my GP7 over to Westly and picked up a cut of empty hoppers. Ran then over to Easton, dropping on car off on the way. It was only later, when a loaded coal train out of Westly was sited to pick up that car that I’d realized what I’d done – I ran an empty train out of the coal mine. Big booboo on my part. It wasn’t loads-out/loads-in. It was garbage-in/garbage-out. Of course, when I confessed my sin to my crew, everyone shrugged […]
November 8, 2020
vents and obligations resulted in us not having much of a crew, just Greg Wells and myself. Still, we broke out our Pennsy switchers, he took the local, I took the coal and dispatching and we ran the session. This one was a lot of fun. We ran it slow, being very careful with our train handling. The bamboo skewers are still, in my opinion, the best uncoupling tool known to man. So we switched our industries and bargained for track rights, in easygoing operation fashion. It was a great deal of fun to work through the schedule – the […]
October 29, 2020
utside of one mini-ops we tried, the last time we ran the club layout was back in February, back before the Covid storm swept over us. For a while the building stood empty. Then we reopened and did a lot of work. So for the past week, we’ve been trying to resuscitate our pike, getting those corroded rails clean, sweeping out the dust and cobwebs and trying to get something like operations going again. For the record, it was full masks, full sanitizers, and to keep the germs down, no phones – as dispatcher I sat at a table in […]
October 18, 2020
nother op session at the club today, with AJ running his coal and Ben as the switch crew. In the logistics side, Greg ran the DS panel and I worked the nonlocking interlocking. And, as Greg put it, I also worked as the superintendent (and an auxiliary brakeman). First off, this little beauty was in place, my very first structure, the Tuscarora Station. You’ll notice that it’s been out of service for twenty years, that the paint is cracked and peeling. Not added yet are the boards over the windows and doors (or the roof weathering). And station signs. So […]