At the throttle

o big night for ops at the club. Rolled down the street and the lot was packed – always a good sign. Didn’t have to beg any jobs – all the locals, all the freights, and almost all the passengers ran. I ended up on the panel – that’s okay, I know how to deal with that. The railroad was just getting started and I was making my usual moves. Run 202 to Zanesville and duck him into a siding, with another warrant to carry him to Martin Yard once the Silver Bullet passed. My other move is to get […]

ot much to say on this one – I rolled everything out [sic] for loading, we had a good team at the show, everything went together… until it was time for the skirts. Which I’d forgotten. So we’re standing there, miles from the club, wondering what to do. The layout looks pretty good – we’re not the only one without skirting. Should someone drive 100 miles round trip to get the box I’d neglected (I’d ridden over, so I couldn’t volunteer for that job). Fetch them? Skip them? It was Bill Sterner who solves the problem (and made me laugh) […]

ome folks in the club wanted this blogged, so here you are. It’s been a weird April 1st today. I played a couple of pranks today, one of them on the club (a freeway was coming through). I was pretty proud of myself – I find myself so very amusing. Worked at the club. Did a little scenery and a lot of club maintenance – trash goes out, filters swapped, vinegar down the drain, doodah, doodah. So now it’s getting late and time, perhaps to leave. First problem – we’ve got a short on the main across Bethlehem. For some […]

een listening to a lot of old radio serials while drilling though audits at work. Some of them are pretty stupid but there are a couple I really like, amongst them Gunsmoke and Frontier Gentleman. However, I really like this new one, Night Beat, where an intrepid night-shift newsguy digs up stories in 1930’s Chicago. Usually it involves gangsters leaning on him, generally beating the shit out of him while sneering things like, “So, going to write about that, Newsie?” Yeah, well, I know what it’s like. So we ran Ken Farnham’s Florida East Coast, and I was once again […]

‘m late on this piece – yeah, I know. Running home after a great session, I saw the moon through (appropriately) the moonroof, and so regardless of the time, one hobby lent itself to another and I was outside with the scope until 12:30am. But that’s hobbies for you. Even when I came in and was putting the peeper away, I really didn’t know what to write about. We had a good showing, a number of the old timers had much of the layout already cleaned. The clocks booted up in master/slave configuration perfectly. My paperwork was already out and […]

ell, it wasn’t as bad as our last club session, but it could have gone better. We had two long trains detail in the same tunnel, and being the tall lanky guy (not running a train at the time) I got to go under and dig them all out. Nothing like a long day in a rolling stock mine. Outside of that, I did get to run – always a good thing. It’s gotta be a pretty bad session to ruin it for me. My engines were purring when I took the inaugural run of the Harris Glen Local up […]

he situation: We’ve got one extra (engine 64) waiting in Rook Yard. Another train is inbound, also an extra, engine 2128. Even though 64 has clearance through the yard, I’ve already dropped the Rook station signal on him. Now to give the order to my station operator (Bruce, who is so good at his job today that he’s the operator for a half-dozen stations). Simple really. Of course, I need to spell all stations and trains to the operator over the phone, to make sure there are no misunderstandings. And here we go. “To Crew and Engineer extra sixty-four six […]

‘ve got a couple of favorite trains I love to run. On my own Coast Route, I love the helper, hissing and grunting my way up the long slope through the Santa Lucia Range. On the NS Saluda, I’m always in 720, a long coal drag feeling its way down that 5% namesake grade. I love the Rinker Run on the FEC. On the club line, I’ll opt for the Mingo Local if nobody else wants it. Yes, there are just trains I like, fun and interesting and full of attitude, ones I’ll run until I’ve got them down perfect. […]

ne of the recurring plot lines in my own life is getting hyper-nervous about things – presentations, operations, all that stuff. All day today, I moved through my work efforts with a leaden stomach, worrying about ops. All my friends always give me a hard time, saying I worry about nothing. Oh no? Tonight was a rough night at the club. I dispatched, and we had some returning members and potential new members in the squad. I wanted it to go well. But traffic was absolutely horrible getting out there (is it wrong for me to hope that whoever caused […]

t hunched predator-profile low in the shadows, its unblinking ball-turret eyes rotating independently, watching for prey. Its twenty foot body yearned to feast on a hobo or railfan – either would do (the camcorders it could regurgitate). Beneath the shielding fen of lichen, it watched. The dull roar of something even bigger and more unstoppable that itself made it raise its head, its throat-sack ballooning in alarm. Something massive and blue growled along the forest line. Panicking, the creature made its mistake, bursting from cover to flee, directly in the path of the oncoming FEC engine… The first I knew […]