Train Blog
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 […]
May 19, 2024
ou’ll notice that this OpsLog starts with a banner image, a nice one captured by Zach B during the pre-dawn hours of our club operations, a special Saturday Night Special event open only to club members (God help us – we can’t afford to have guests wandering around while we’re running under subdued lighting). The thing is, it was a usual session held on a weekend where we shut down the bank of lights over the layout, making things gloomy and using the layout’s lighting to best effect (you’ll notice the Westinghouse Bridge in the background of the above shot, […]
May 19, 2024
ell, this just shows the dangers of over-scheduling. In my defense, we’d agreed to have “night ops” at the club layout this Saturday, and then a few days later the FEC crew call came out. The club is a commitment I have to honor (and it’s fun) but the FEC hasn’t run in six months and I wanted to jump back aboard (it’s also fun). So that’s it – run to Palm Bay in the morning, operate until late afternoon, then burn across half the state to the LM&O for the evening session. And I had a sandwich with me […]
May 6, 2024
need you to run manifest 223,” the dispatcher told me. “It’s almost two hours late.” So fine. In minutes I was rattling through the Spokane throat, running at track speed, wheels sparking off the multiple frogs and points. I was reminded of the old flick Broadway Limited. These were the times you needed to lean out of the cab window, face into the wind, sliding your goggles over your eyes. Then I thought of something. “Dispatcher, 223. What’s my authority to?” “Pasco yard. And move it. I want you to make up time.” “Got it. Highball.” Hit Pasco and Klauck […]
April 25, 2024
he moon dapples the western Pennsylvanian hills with splashes of silver. All is still. Suddenly there arises a low rumble and large slabs of forest slowly part, sliding away, the wire armatures of Bill White fake trees twanging. An exposed lair. And then a dark shape vaults into the sky! It’s the Dispatchocopter! Whirling along like a large, dark, criminal-fear-inspiring bat, Eastern Dispatcherman rides the night air, having left his ward Western Dispatcherboy in charge of the railroad. His mission – to combat the confusion that holds the Lehigh, Monongahela & Ohio Railroad in its deadly grip. The Robert-button has […]
April 22, 2024
guess it comes from bumming around the Netherlands for two weeks. Everywhere you go, you see trains zip past. And Central Station in Amsterdam has more rail traffic in and out that a Christmas tree layout. Every five minutes, a sleek blue train from the Dutch Railways bursts into the sunset, flying across fields and vaulting canals. And here, we just crashed a couple of trains at Folkston, GA, in what sounds like a complete stooges act of train safety. But those Dutch trains – poetry in motion. Look, for American railroading, Doc Andy likes creating fast lines. It’s Union […]