Some people are better at solving switching puzzles in their heads than others, and can visualize 4 or 5 moves ahead. I operated with a chap a month or so ago that pulled everything and added it to his train. He then dropped all the right cars back in the proper spurs and rolled away with all the proper cars in his train. This guy has been operating in the Lilliputian scales for years.
That’s not me. I can drop and pick-up up from the same spur, but anything more than that and I forget which cars belong in my train and where the rest are supposed to be. It takes me a longer, but I’m retired and this is a hobby to be enjoyed, what’s the hurry?
This morning I had a train that ran the full length of the railway and switched most locations. Our programmers have added facing point moves at most locations, so each one was a bit of challenge. My last assignment was at Bell: 5 sets outs and 5 pick-ups. No two cars were grouped, and most were buried in strings on separate tracks. Just to add a little stress, everyone else had finished and was looking forward to grilled hotdogs. But on the IPP&W, nobody eats until ALL the cars are put away.
I had a lot of hungry visitors encouraging me to just quit right there. But we have had two rainouts in the last month, and we were lucky the rain stopped in time this morning to get this one in. Besides this is October and the mornings will soon be too frosty to comfortably operate. So I turned a deaf ear and went about enjoying what might be the last standard gauge operation of the year. Lunch went ahead without me, but there were still two dogs when I was done.
Our club members look forward to our weekly railway operations. On some of the holiday weekends the crowd is a little thinner, but when a “run-what-you-brung-day” is suggested it is quickly dismissed by everyone present. Better to run one man crews with no dispatcher and yardmasters, than run in circles.
Lifting on end of a car to switch? Guilty as charged! I have my throttle set for a reverse delay of 2.5 seconds. While I usually set out with an uncoupling tool, it gets forgotten somewhere along with my bottle of water. If it wasn’t for gondolas and hoppers, I probably wouldn’t finish with my radio either. Dang ol’timers!
http://www.tomrush.com./video_remember.html