My railroad is
settling into a regular operating pattern—at least when my slot in the area
operating layout rotation does not conflict with holiday weekends. Nineteen folk showed up to operate my
railroad this past weekend. Even with
that many operators, most road freights “made do” with single man crews. We prefer two operators for train crews so
that both ends of a train can be observed.
Dispatcher communications handled by a conductor is important with the
verbal (over the radio) operating system employed. With a single person “crew”, one has to
handle both throttle and radio. No one
was complaining, though!
This session
marked significant development of my “Santa Clara Tower” operator
position. This operator controls the
traffic in and out of the Eugene Arrival/Departure Yard (lower level reverse
loop staging). The tower aspect of the job
involves control of the many switches in this bottleneck area between the
Eugene depot and classification yard and the arrival/departure (A/D) yard and
engine facility. The intent is that all
road freights and Amtrak originate or arrive into the A/D yard. This procedure is new to much of my operating
crew, so it will take some time to fully accomplish. Meanwhile, the “Santa Clara Tower” position
worked well.
Vic N. surveys
the Eugene Arrival/Departure Yard as part of his Santa Clara Tower duties. Behind him, Rodger C. is getting ready for
his train.
A note on the
Santa Clara Tower: I spent a great deal
of time (off-hours) early in my working career in the San Francisco Bay Area
photographing rail action “in the shadow of” the Southern Pacific’s Santa Clara,
California, tower. When friend Bruce
Barney (ALW Lines: http://alwlines.com/ )
released a kit for this tower, I just “had” to get one. I took note of the complex switch-work in the
bottleneck area between the two major Eugene yard areas and realized I needed a
tower operator here. Though SP had few
towers in Oregon, this location cried out for one. As to name, the Santa Clara district of
Eugene is on the north side of Eugene—very near to the SP yard. Model RR Rule Number One applies here—It is
MY railroad! <wink>
The introduction
of the computer-printed waybills (http://espeecascades.blogspot.com/2016/05/improved-car-movement-documents.html)
has the impact of better car distribution.
Staging is beginning to fall into patterns I expected when designing the
railroad. A significant challenge involves
staging the “XMUGs”—empty lumber cars returning to Eugene. Several trains full of lumber box cars and
flat cars need to return to Eugene from California marshalling points and the
Ogden Gateway. Conversely, the trains
departing Eugene for those major reclassification points tend to be more
mixed. I was happy with the setup
process for the trains at Eugene and for cars needed for the local freights,
also from Eugene. Staging for the ninth
mainline operating session found a couple of XMUGs at Crescent Lake, so this
session went well. As I restage now
after the session, I find I need to flesh out the car fleet a bit (cars are
on-hand) to create the desired traffic.
My staging
efforts for Eugene paid off, as the operating crew always had plenty to do AND
we had lots of traffic on the mainline. Indeed,
this was the first mainline operating session that actually ran all of the trains
on my standard line-up—over a dozen trains.
Usually, the crew tires out by the latter trains.
Here are more
photos from this successful session.
As usual, the
Eugene classification yard crew was busy throughout. Mike B. ran the East Switcher. Dave H, behind him, is working the Eugene
City Switcher. David B. (red shirt in
distance) ran the West Switcher. Beyond
them on the other side of the aisle, Mike L. and Jim M. are working the first
Springfield local. This local switches
the industries on the depot side of the mainline.
Bruce M. and Bob
S. work the Oakridge Turn.
Dick K. gets
clearance from the Dispatcher, while Steve C. awaits clearance to begin the trek
RR-East downhill from Cascade Summit.
A helper is cut
in at the RR-East end of Oakridge. I
need to work with crews to not do this, as the location of the end of the trains
through a tunnel and over the bridge at Westfir. Though compressed in distance on my model
railroad, this would pose a similar
problem at the full-sized Oakridge. Conductor
Rick A. is getting asphyxiated in that to-be-built tunnel, while helper
engineer Bob Y. breaths clear air out in the yard. I need to add cross-overs in the Oakridge yard
to assist this move without “endangering” the rear end crew!
Bill M. watches
the slack action closely as he helps a train uphill through Cruzatte.
My railroad has
come to life sufficiently to simulate conditions on the real Cascade Line. My operating crew faces problems similar to
those encountered on the big railroad and they employ many of the same
solutions.
