Train Blog
July 13, 2025
ig one-day show for us over in Deland, make quite exciting because I’d be show boss and Old Man Raiford would not be around for set up. Had a new driver, Leonard, who took away any concerns on my part by moving the trailer around like a seasoned switch crew with a boxcar (though that plastic parking post was a little worse for wear after we went through). But anyway, even though the fairgrounds are now locking up their gates overnight, we still manged to worm both mini and maxi (the truck and trailer) on for a 6:30-ish arrival. Since […]
June 29, 2025
aybe I’m expecting too much from my hobby of operations? Don’t know. The last few haven’t been so hot. And for this session, it’s not the fault of the Farnhams (no, it falls pretty much on the operators but a bit on the weather, too) but the June run of the Florida East Coast was a tough session. How tough? Got home by 8pm and fell into bed to “read” and crashed for nine hours solid (would have been ten, but the cats demanded their due (i.e. food)). So what went wrong? Well, we knew going in that the Market […]
June 26, 2025
was in a pretty mellow mood when I got to the club Wednesday. It might have been because all morning I’d been moving boxes of books (just like cubes of wood, but with writing, not rings, inside their slices) until noon or so, in the hot Florida sun. I’d had a beer at dinner and settled in the back desk to set up the clocks and computer and run the railroad. I don’t know if that explains my easy-going nature that night, and I have no explanation why the rest of you were all so… tetchy. We have that phrase, […]
June 23, 2025
o I’m sitting at my favorite table in my favorite coffee spot, watching the vehicular frustration at 17-92 and Lake Highland. Odd start for a blog. As most of you know from my long conversations around the clubhouse, my home has some termite infestations. With the bug men coming on Tuesday, I needed to clear the last of the heavy furniture from the baseboards. For that, I’d need my brother. But of course, he couldn’t come out any other time than Sunday noonish sometime sorta. Which is, as you all know, WAZU-time. When I contacted Doc and told him my […]
June 15, 2025
pecial Leigh, Monongahela & Ohio session for the evening of Father’s Day (or, for me, Dead-twig-on-the-tree-of-life day). On occasional Saturday nights, we turn up the difficulty level and run the LM&O in the early fifties, with train orders and the Bethlehem tower in service with its block signals (actually, little joke, they are interlocking signals. If you were there, you’d know what the deal was). Suddenly the crews are forced to think on their literal feet, determining their own movements, ducking into sidings and meeting opposing trains while running on their schedules. And I’m happy to say that we had […]
June 8, 2025
knew this would happen. Turns out that the station agents for Dulce, Placerville and Dolores decided to celebrate a birthday. They went to the bath house in Placerville and steamed in their tubs, drinking stump hole. Coming out, they encountered three loose women and retired to the Lemmon Hotel next door where they engaged in activities outlawed in the Western Bay employee handbook. Needless to say, they are all now suffering Cupid’s Measles. This left the railroad shorthanded during a change in operational methods, with the superintendent agenting all the stations and the dispatcher keeping an eye on Navajo and […]
June 1, 2025
oke up on the day of operations to find the rain thundering down like the weeping of gods. And since gods are omnipotent and can presumably see the future and what would happen, no wonder they were weeping. Maybe I should have invited the gods to run with me on the Virginia SouthWestern. They’d probably to better than Orlando N-Trak did. So I hydroplaned my way to the clubhouse meet point/swamp to group up and ride out. Got to John’s in time, the whole squad, where we got a nice breakfast of donuts and coffee, a real lifesaver. I took […]
May 29, 2025
wo years ago, I was writing weekly pieces on train ops to a Facebook N-scale page. Reverend Jim and John DV know this guy who hosts it (“knew”, rather). Anyway, I’d also add our OpsLogs to his page so his readers could enjoy our massive sessions. And you know me – I try to punch up the sessions with drama and humor. Well, after one submission, the guy responds (I don’t remember verbatim – I left the page following this). Anyway, he told us me that we needed to get better. This chaos and confusion was amateur-level stuff and clearly […]
May 25, 2025
nother Grand Day Out on the Florida East Coast over in Palm Bay. And if you think it’s all about running trains, no, it’s about all the stuff it takes to get together, to exchange greetings, eat too many cookies and get ready for top-level operations on this fully-signaled line. The setup was good. Rode over with Kyle and Terry, JB and me in the back seat. No Brightlines spotted, alas, but lunch at Culvers was good. All the usual guys showed at the Farnhams’, with JB and Jack talking about their shared butterfly fetish, me chatting with Chip, Al […]
May 21, 2025
he best thing about retirement (among many entries) is the fact that on a Tuesday afternoon I could cruse over to Cocoa, spool some time reading under a tree, then putter over to buddy Jack’s house for a session on the Yosemite Valley Railroad, a neat little bedroom line that has recently added another ten or so feet of running distance. Greg managed to make it this time so it wasn’t me running everything. Now I got to run with attention to what I was doing and really enjoy it. Not that I didn’t enjoy it last time, but I […]