Once again it was the last Friday of the month so as per normal another operating session was hosted on the Santa Fe Railway Southern Division.
Numbers were down due to some of the lads on travel (we have a 4 day long-weekend here in Melbourne this weekend to help celebrate the world famous horse race the Melbourne Cup that is run on the first Tuesday of November every year. I think this is about it's 152nd year.) anyway there were 8 of us in total to run trains across the Railroad.
Kick off time is usually 7.30 pm so after setting the computer fast clock to commence at 6.40am and a 4:1 ratio, turning on all the power to get the BDL168's, SE8C's, track power and the CTC panels to light up we were ready for a hectic night as it turned out.
During my walk around the RR a few days before the session to set up car cards and waybills along with the first two trains, I noticed a lot of cars had not been picked up on earlier sessions from the towns of Winfield and Ponca City. I thought why move them, why not send out some "extras" just after the first two trains had departed to do a sweep, pick them up and return them to their correct locations at Flynn and Augusta.
So Trains 1 and 2 departed close to the correct time from Augusta and Flynn respectively.
As dispatcher for the session I called on a Dennis and Ron to handle the two extras one from Flynn and the other from Augusta.
Dennis grabbed two locos and a caboose from Rob the Flynn yardmaster for the session and worked his way to Ponca and back.
After Ron grabbed a pair of four axle loco's and a caboose from little John the Augusta yardmaster he set off to Ponca also only to find that with all of the other traffic he did not get that far.
Calling up the extras sounded like a good idea during the week but they just got in the road (not the lads fault) of almost every other train that had to run straight after. Note to self, do not let that happen again, at that time into the timetable at least.
I've been a bit slack and not been working on the RR of late so did not get any of the loco wheels nor track cleaned. Note to self, clean track and wheels before the next ops session. Hmmm.
Anyway we did get to run a few trains mixed in with about 40 minutes for beans starting at about 9.00pm. and stopping at about 10.45.
I think the night was okay, just not as good as we normally have.
I got to take some pics of a few trains with my Samsung Smart phone and Ron got some more of the action so here are a couple from last night with thanks to Ron.
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| Train one passing through Perry on its way to Augusta |
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| Big John is in charge of the AUG/HAC/AUG sweeper as he drops off empties and picks up loaded grain cars from Hackney. |
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| A Manifest freight passing through Hackney on its way to Flynn Yard headed by FP45 105. |
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| Rob doesn't get to operate that much on the RR so here he is in charge of Flynn Yard. He drives real trains too! |
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| Barry switching at Ponca. This is a tough job as this train which left Flynn gets to Ponca, drops off empty grain cars, picks up loaded grain cars from an elevator at each end of town and then returns back to Flynn. All the while making way for passing trains to and from other locations on the RR. |
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| Big John in charge of the AUG/HAC/AUG Sweeper switching at Winfield on his return to Augusta whilst a patient Vic (in the foreground) waits to enter Winfield to switch at the Winfield Cement plant way off in the distance with his cement train and complete his job. |
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| The old dispatcher (me) sitting at the CTC panel trying sort out the traffic. |
Thanks for a great night lads.
Catch you soon and thanks for dropping by the SFRSD Blog.
Rod.
