General Discussion (Model Railroader)

Last night I attended an operating session that was jam packed and almost a comedy of errors.  Afterward the owner said, "I would have thought I was training a bunch of rookies".  The Gulf Colorado & Santa Fe runs on a 6:1 fast clock so 10 minutes = 1 hour.  Passenger trains are scheduled, freights dispatched in between them.  The prototype is the Santa Fe between Gainsville Texas and Purcell Oklahoma (excluding Ardmore OK. We just pretend like it isn't there)

My first call board was for #6 the Ranger.  I had the Superintendent's private car tacked onto the end. The dispatcher let two freights out of the yard before I could leave.  I started almost an hour late and was running fast.  I got a speeding violation.  I don't think so but since I neglected to take my HO speedometer I couldn't prove I was under 90 mph.   I had to make an extra long stop in Dougherty to have the local switcher pull off the Superintendent's car.    I rushed to Gulf Junction to make a meet with #302 going up the Lindsay branch.   Sure enough they had been waiting for over an hour.  As such the normal switching by train #321 was delayed as they needed the passing siding for a run around.  After the stop I blasted out of the station only to find that suddenly I was ON the Lindsay Branch.   Someone had not set the turnout back to the main.   I had to back up before I could proceed.   Past there the train enters a non-prototypical tunnel and I went to the other end to park it in its staging track.  When the train arrived I was about 5 cars short.  I had to go back through the tunnels (with helix) and find it.   Sigh...

I thought my hard luck train was over for the night but it was not to be.   Next assignment I pulled #16 the Texas Chief.  I was looking at a train order to set out a head end car when I went through Gene Autry.  While I remembered to look at the station semaphore to see if I had passengers, I didn't look at the schedule.  Oops corn field meet right over the Red River. Oh Yeah!  I was supposed to stop in Gene Autry to meet the #15 my eastbound counter part.  Fortunately the other engineer was on the ball and we didn't have a head on.

Problems HAVE to be over now - right?  Wrong, in Dougherty after making my head end car drop off and pick up, I was looking at the new car's orders.  I was still backing to recouple the train and WHAM I slammed into it about 15 mph.  I am certain the cooks' in the diner not only had spilled soup but were probably knocked to the floor along with all the other passengers.   Then to add insult to injury, the switcher crew, who had pulled off the car I was dropping off, was looking at their orders for it's car and did the same thing.  They ran through the double ended house track and WHAM broadsided my observation car.  Old rule just violated twice - STOP the loco before looking at paper work.

The mis-adventures didn't stop there.....  And it wasn't just me.  Something in the air??!?

Have others had those kinds of nights where NOTHING has gone right? 

_ _ it happens.  LIfe can be like that, some days can be quite overwhelming.  Have only attended a couple of operating sessions, but they seemed to have a few glitches, though minor compared to your night.  Maybe next time you will have  a super night (well it was a nice thought.)

 Good luck,

I've had days where nothing seemed to go right. of course, i've never had a bad operating session, because i've never been to one, lol. But yeah, that's how life goes, and it sucks when it's your night to just not have your night (as if I could make that sound any more complicated, lol). Hey, you'kll have a great operating session next time though, lol.

I needed that.   lol    rotflmao

Back in the 1950s many model railroaders had "engineer's caps" that said the Model Railroader slogan: "Model Railroading is Fun."  [Even RMC's Hal Carstens was photographed wearing one.]

When you have one of "those nights" just repeat to yourself "model railroading is fun, model railroading is fun."   You won't believe it for a minute, but it might ease the pain just a little.

This is also helpful when you drip hot solder on your pants leg.  

Dave Nelson

I know how you feel. I was on a friends Santa Fe layout and was running a new BLI 2-10-2 and a friend was running a BRASS set of f7's on his passanger train and we had a corn field meet and we both put our trains in E-stop and we did it just in time as we had a 1/16 gap from coupler to coupler. Later that night the dispatcher sent me up the main and I almost hit head on a BLI cab forward. I was watching the tracks ahead of me or I would have destroyed 2 engines that I loved. I also have had a Proto E6A derail the front truck on the top of the mountain and almost go to the bottom of the mountain in a hurry

Well, I was at the open house of the Worcester Model Railroaders, and as I was interested in joining, one member let me operate his sound equipped set of Providence & Worcester U-boats. I was having a blast, as this was my first expirience with sound equipped diesels, and I was passing through Framingham when I noticed an Amtrak train backing out onto the main in front of me. I stopped to avoid a wreck. Then, despite a working signal system (which I later found out was ignored by most of the members) I was rear ended by a BN coal train. The caboose and last two cars of my train ended up in a ditch along the ROW, and the lead 3 SD70MACs of the coal train derailed as well. Turns out the other engineer had been chatting with a visitor and wasn't paying attention to either the signals nor the track ahead. No harm done, we rerailed our trains and continued to run them.

The worst wreck on my home layout involved a heavy manifest and manned helpers, and it actually happened very recently.. I was operating a 24 car train (I counted later, and it stands as the record of longest train operated on the WRS by one engineer)  with 3 units up front and two ni back. I had a UT4 in each hand and was controlling both the head engines as well as the rear end helpers. y train had made it around the layout once, and I was just passing through the yard when my friend arrived and wanted to run too.

His layout isn't known for slow speed control, so he's not used to the slow speed characteristics of my operating tendencies. That was a problem with the rear end helpers, where you had to go the same speed as the head end locos. I didn't realize this at the time, however, and assigned him to the rear end helpers. We had barely made it out of the yard, when in the town formerly known as West Concord, he accelerated off the yard shoo-fly track (the yard was being rebuilt, and there was a temporary track built during the reconstruction) and knocked the whole train over on the outside of the curve.

 I explained to him about the slow speed capabilities of the throttles and locomotives, and we set off again.We had no more incidents until we reached the curve in Dooley at the foot of the pass, where a few cars tipped on the tight curve due to over caution on the part of the rear helpers. I noticed though, and slowed the head end locos to keep the train from stringlining.

Our train was really working hard to make it up the 4% grade, and wheels on the lighter locomotives (a Bachmann GP35 and GP30 set on the rear, which have since been retired) were starting to slip. The locomotives up front (a Spectrum C40-8W, an Atlas U23B, and an Atlas SDP35) were easily able to make the grade. When we reached the curved summit, the drag from the slipping rear helpers and the rest of the train caused the whole shebang to stringline on the curve!

I've taken some steps to prevent this from happening again, however.  The Bachmann locos have been retired, and replacement locomotives include Atlas and Proto 2000 units which won't have weight problems. I am also converting all my rolling stock to metal wheels, which should elimanate a lot of drag. Also, it provides an added side effect in that I no longer have enough rolling stock in service to require helpers!

TrainManTy:

Turns out the other engineer had been chatting with a visitor and wasn't paying attention to either the signals nor the track ahead. No harm done, we rerailed our trains and continued to run them.

This one happened a couple of tuesdays ago: I decided to find out how much my P2K SD45s could pull together. I knew One of the SD45s could pull 30-45 or so cars up the helix (3%) on it's own, but I wanted to see what I could do with 2, and to possibly break the club record (83 cars by 3 engines). When I got 70 cars (about 20 of them being mine, the rest were the clubs) on those 2 engines and tried to go up the helix, the cars near the middle of the train started to lean towards the center and derail. As a result, it took almost an hour to go up it because I had to fix cars every few seconds. I later learned that it's better to go on the outside track of the helix if pulling a ton of cars uphill. I later did that with the same train, and made it up while highballing it. I never did find out where it was too much for those. (so what happens when I add Athearn Genesis F45s to the P2K SD45s?)

Sunday was very eventful. A fellow club member was running his P2K CNW F7s with a passenger train on the outside module. Well his engine got really hot and eventually quit working. Lots of people trains kept derailing or uncoupling because the track was getting affected by the weather. One club member had a problem with his Athearn Genesis SD45-2s and his train stopped on the main. I was behind him, using my SW15s to push my rorarty plow. Well, I ended up hitting him, lucklying no damage.

A few assorted ones

1. A kid running an ATSF (blue and yellow warbonnet) GP7 with a short mixed freight pretty fast while approaching the diamond crossing. I'm running a 40 car grain train led by 2 GP9s. I'm already on the diamond. I see the kid's train coming and tell him to stop at the same time making my train go as fast as it could go to hopefully get out of his way. I almost made it but his engine T-bones my train on the 2nd to last car. Luckily his father saw what was happening and put his train on emergency stop. In one night the same kid hits me 3 times (coal train with 2 SD9s on the 12th car, string of boxcars lead by 2 Gp30s on the fifth car, and DRGW passenger train in the first dome car) in much the same manner. (would have been 4 had P2K's U-boats not been as insanely fast as they are). All 3 times there was no damage done.

In that same night, on the same diamonds, that DRGW passenger set gets T-boned again. Except this time it's a mess. A train led by 2 Berkshires T-bones my set at high speed. Hit it in a sleeper car, and keeps going for another foot, dragging the surrounding passenger cars with it and tearing up the scenery. All told, it looked like a real train wreck, minus the smashed up train cars.