Regular OPS session last night.
One of the OPERATORS was starting setout, I find a stock car (botch) on my bench, with no coupler pin at all.
“I found it that way”…
Knew it was going to be “odd” when the same OPERATOR hit the setout so hard, he knocked some cars off the curve and dumped half a log car into the turntable pit at the end of the track.
So, I get up on the benchwork, fix the cars, tell the OPERATOR to “hang on a minute while I un-snag the log car…”, and he goes WOT (wide-open-throttle), and pulls all the log cars off the inside of the curve up against the cabeese…
Get THAT fixed, go to the house to make coffeee, look over at ENO junction, where the OPERATOR had parked his sweeper train and Shay on the Lower Loop, there, past the loop, was the setout Shay, on it’s side, backed into all the stock cars accordioned behind it…
We’d left the switch wrong, went through it, and backed up…
So, before I even get the coffee started, I am out fixing couplers…
Then, couple hours into the run, it starts to rain.
Two hours later, it freezes.
Had to fight turnouts freezing up, wet couplers that wouldn’t uncouple or couple as they were frozen…
Then, the old Porter (botch), seems the cold and heavy use got to the stack, snapped off at the base and took the smokebox-mounted dynamo with it…
One of the short open gons for mine service (botch) had a journal bearing failure, you could hear it squealing for miles…
Crews spent the morning repairing equipment.
An now, 1330 hours local, it’s 40 degrees, steps still frozen, street still frozen…
