Train Blog
May 15, 2025
ecky was sitting in the back of her parents’ overloaded Buick, rolling out of some Pennsylvania backwoods town, Tuskawhosit or something. Her dad had to stop for directions (again). They were trying to find the town Becky’s mom’s sister lived in; Westly. Staying two weeks with her coal-mining relatives did not excite her at all. Mom: “They have a canoe.” Becky: “The river is sludge.” Mom: “You can watch all the trains.” Becky: “I hate trains.” Mom: “Look at the fall colors on the trees!” Becky: “…” They were just rumbling down the beat-up two lane road out of town, […]
May 11, 2025
kay, so this was a test flight. We were confident in our flight worthiness. Experienced crews. Casual weekend. Fully planned. With crosswinds. And thunderstorms. And the lights and radars were out. And a UFO was stooging about the boundary fence. We’d all come out for a Saturday Night Special, where fewer people means more elbow room and a chance to engage in more difficult operations. It’s rather fun, a challenge. Tonight was a two-for – TT&TO ops in a new and untested format, and an interlocking district (run by a towerman and signaller) in the Lehigh to Bethlehem stretch. First […]
April 25, 2025
wasn’t really at the top of my game that night. I’d gotten two boosters (Covid and Measles) and I feeling out of sorts. Also, there’s something going on my life that keeps me up at night. So I was tired. And foggy. I couldn’t even seem to work the dispatcher program, miss-clicking and fumbling my way through it. I wasn’t at my best. And it showed. I kicked out my usual signature warrant start, with orders to 202, SB2, 921, 927 and 223. I should just print up copies of these to cut out to issue, pre-written. Always the same. […]
April 21, 2025
n the ride over to Palm Bay and the Farnham’s Florida East Coast, Kyle and I discussed ways we could help Ken make the railroad a little easier to prepare. We do drive over to Doc’s WAZU to help stage and clean. Maybe something like that would keep the FEC enjoyable for the Farnhams (and operational for us) in the coming years. I guess what we did give him was a wonderful session. Kyle and I seem to have the Midas Touch for sessions these days. We’ve had a string of good ones. The best thing was that we were trying to […]
April 17, 2025
‘ve read a lot of books about World War One aviation, and the one thing that really killed early aviators (especially those with rotary engines) was spins. If they stalled and tipped into one, chances were they’d spin all the way to the ground. And that would be that. The reason I mention this was that, while running the Ashbury hostler job (moving engines in a turntabled engine house), I put a huge steam engine into a spin. Pushed up against the fascia by a knot of people that had formed (because of elsewhere trains doing elsewhere jobs, all in […]
April 14, 2025
y mini purred down tree-lined Lakemont, the recent session behind me. I drove quietly, no radio, no jumble of thoughts, but the wind rippling through the open windows. My mind was still as a pond, no plans or formulations. I wasn’t even thinking of a blog. Flatline. It was funny but the session didn’t disappoint me or thrill me. I didn’t consider the things I should have done (or words I shouldn’t have said). It comes down to one thing. That session was perfect. This comes on the heels of Kyle and me running over at the West Virginia Northern […]
April 6, 2025
t’s all about rules, I guess. Weekend of a stress-inducing show – stressful because I wasn’t allowed to lift more than five pounds with my right hand due to post-surgery rules. This made me pretty useless, so I got the useless job of being the “show boss” (i.e, supervisor). Without Steve there (he was on another of his many vacations) and no prior show boss in attendance, I was rather on my own. Oh, I’ve done just about ever show we’ve attended by not as the “official” show boss. My team got there at 7pm (well, most of it, anyway). […]
March 27, 2025
t was the best of times, it was the worst of times. But doesn’t every OpsLog start like this? The important thing here is that we gradually get better. In prepping the photographs for this blog, I noticed a number of properly-done background things (such as cars off-spotted correctly). As simple as it seems, it means that our operators are learning. Every session is a bit better than the last. And so, in this blog, I’ll be listing the lessons we (or, at least, “I”) learned. You’ll see them in bold. Okay, from my point of view, I came on […]
March 24, 2025
came into this session with determination. The day before we’d operated over at the Virginia Southwestern. Some of the operators were new, some timid, and some.. well, “some”. At one point we had four L&N trains in the CTC-controlled shared trackage, and two more snippy Southern trains trying to get through. Since I controlled the turnouts from the panel, I set up a pretty neat lap siding pass for two long coal trains to get around Kyle’s mine shifter. But the two crews were timid – even with warrants all the way to Atlanta staging, even with all turnouts set, […]
March 23, 2025
t was such a nice morning. Came out of the house as the sun broke over the trees, breath steaming in the cold as I made my way to the car. Swung by the coffee shop to pick up a cup. Dropped by Zach’s place to mailbag him for the ride out – an informal meeting of the ONT Operations Committee. Happy to say while we rode out, we might have cracked the steel mill output dilemma, as well as tidying up the freight flow across our club’s bridge route. Time for a quick meal in Wendy’s before heading over […]