Train Blog
January 5, 2024
om Wilson could easily play the role of Father Christmas with his warm grin and twinkling eyes. So that is why we find him in an huge stuffed easy chair before a roaring fire. In his lap is a large book. “Tonight, Children,” he says with an smile so infectious, it could be an STD in The Villages, “I shall read you a story. It is called, The Tale of the Two Dispatchers.” So there once was a land with two dispatchers, the Virginia Southwestern. The Southern dispatcher ran a line staffed with merry country people who ran their trains […]
January 5, 2024
ith Protorails in town, I got invites to help run the three local layouts, the first being the beautiful West Virginia Northern (way, way, way over in Tampa). Since they needed two boomers, I took Chris Strecker with me (since he is both a railroader and game enthusiast, meaning he can pick up operating rules/instructions quickly). We had a pretty good drive over (given we got two weekday rush hours) and at my goading we took Ashbury west end (he as the yard switcher and me on my beloved hostler job). And to Chris’ credit, we kept it busy (hostler, […]
December 30, 2023
eally, it was a terrible solo effort on the Tuscarora today. I didn’t have ANY tower malfunctions. And I didn’t have ANY derailments. Horrible. See, I figured that before I worked scenery (and since I had an entire Saturday afternoon at the club) I’d run lever testing and try to get it to fail. After about twenty fruitless minutes of this, I figured I should just run a session. At first I was just going to randomize cars but then I found an unused switchlist in the back and made it into an honest to goodness session. And I ran […]
December 28, 2023
o this is a transcript (sort of) of a call between the dispatcher and 415, an empty hopper run out of Calypso for Carbon Hill. DS: Ready to copy? 415: Ready. DS: Okay, Warrant 281 to 414 at RedRock. Checkbox 1: Previous warrant is void. Checkbox 2: Proceed to Weirton. Checkbox 3: Proceed on Main Track #2. I have three checkboxes. 415: (Repeats orders verbatim) DS: (Pause). Okay, you know which track is track 2, right? 415: Yes, I know. DS: (Concerned) It’s the outer loop in Pittsburgh. 415: Yes, I understand. DS: (Nagging) There is a fake signal bridge […]
December 23, 2023
he good thing about microlayouts (if you consider a 3×8 a “micro”) is that a session can be set up and hosted in quick order. So that’s what my friend Chris did – he asked me if on Thursday if we wanted to run on Friday and I said (of course) yes (is there any other answer?). And run we did. I might have mentioned this before, but Chris has a great small layout. Essentially there are four trains each day between Jacksonville and Miami. Each train takes six laps to complete a run. Each lap represents a different Florida […]
December 22, 2023
sat down to run my Tuscarora at the club (where I keep it). It was a slow night so I ran it myself, a one-man job. Details are HERE. As mentioned, at the end of the session, the control tower with its computerized lever control died again. Since then, the engineer who constructed it has been over and picking through it. Unfortunately, it’s not the same problem (a bad solder joint) as the last time. We spent a couple of hours fussing over it. Right now he’s in “thinking” mode. He’s sent me some more questions about the failures (I’ll […]
December 21, 2023
uick post – tonight Steve played with the tower and had it crashing routinely, until it stopped crashing. After he left, I put the cars on and using an old sheet I’d stored in my locker some time ago, I ran a full session. Since I needed to test the tower, I did both leverman and freight engineer. What made it a pain was that to keep the aisle open, I had to run from the side (where the tower is usually bolted on). This meant that any uncoupling I had to do, I had to get out of my […]
December 18, 2023
kay, so, outside of the tacos… Smiles. Threatened the host I was going to start my trash-out blog this way. So outside of the tacos, the whole session was a shambles. Trains ran on a time scale that seemed arbitrary because it was arbitrary. The host, a.k.a. “King Chronos”, could make it any time he wished. So a timetable in these situations is like a constitution under a despot. We were his pawns, dancing to his tune. Okay, not that I fake-bashed him (though the time complain is true), let’s get on with the blog. We were worried going […]
December 15, 2023
here is an old logic problem. You are traveling to market with the following items, a fox, a rabbit and a cabbage. You get to a deep stream and there is a tiny boat on the shore, just large enough for you and one item. You can ferry each of your possessions across – one at a time – but note that if left alone, the fox will eat the rabbit and the rabbit will eat the cabbage. Can you work this logic problem out so everything is safely across? Switching is like this. I’ve switched on model railroads since […]
December 14, 2023
not-so-good solo run on the Tuscarora last night. The original plan was to run a session by myself before the club. But I just started a really good book and didn’t want to break away from it. Read for a while, went to the club, showed guests around, helped out here and there, and finally (about 9:30 when most people had gone home) I set up a session and ran the default position. The basic reason was that I’d just gotten my SW-7 back from the shop and wanted to make sure it ran well. I mean, one guy running. […]