Sources of inspiration

It's always good to have sources of inspiration to get yourself fired up about working on the railroad.  I've had a few of those experiences recently, and the only thing holding me back has been a busy non-hobby schedule and these doggone early nights of darkness. 

The first recent inspiration was operating on Seth Gartner's New York Central Piney Fork Branch.  Seth's layout is a beautiful HO layout based on the New York Central in and around his hometown of Minerva, OH.  Scenery is only partially complete, and is very nice where it is complete, but all of us who operate know that a railroad can be beautiful without even a hint of scenery.

On Seth's layout, I ran the infamous Wheeling Power & Light job out of Minerva.  When enough empties had arrived at the yard, I boarded my power, put my train together, and headed south out of town.  My first stop would be at Phillips, where I would set a cut of hoppers off on the south leg of the wye.  These empties would later be spotted at the nearby Ohio & Pennsylvania mine.  I then proceeded south to Piney Fork Yard, where I met a yard job scurrying about and one of my partners in crime, Todd Arnett, working another mine run.  After figuring out how all three jobs could work at Piney Fork at the same time, I eventually got out of town and rolled through Dillonvale on my way to the Yellow Dog Mine.  There I spotted empties and picked up loads before running around the train at St. Clairsville to start returning north.

Arriving back in Piney Fork, I met a southbound merchandise train before descending northward back to Phillips to pull the empties so I could place them and pull loads from the Ohio & Pennsylvania Mine between there and Amsterdam, OH.  After finishing the work at the mine, I pulled north again and ran my entire train around the wye at Phillips.  I was now a loaded coal train, having made all my pickups, and it was time to head back south again to work the W&LE interchange at Hopedale, OH.  At Hopedale I would meet a couple of trains in the process of backing my loaded train into the W&LE connection track and picking up empty hoppers from the W&LE interchange.

Nearly three real hours later, I was heading back to Minerva with an empty train that would get yarded there.  What a trip that was, and what a great time moving coal on a light density branch line.


The second recent inspirational event was an operating session at Bob Helm's Clinchfield Railroad Elkhorn Extension.  Also an HO modeler, Bob has done the north end of the Clinchfield right with a very accurate representation of the real thing.  Running distances between towns or passing tracks are long, train speeds are slow, and work along the line is plentiful.   During the 4-5 hour operating session, I was part of a shifter crew the first half and I was the dispatcher during the second half.

Fellow N Scaler and Clinchfield modeler Ken Borowski and I were teamed up on a Nora Turn out of Dante, VA.  Ken acted as the engineer while I worked as the conductor of the job as we ran.  Our crew climbed aboard an A-B-A set of gray-and-yellow Clinchfield F-units and proceeded to the north end of the yard at Dante, where we would get ahold of 10 system empty hoppers and a caboose.  After a brake test, we were northbound from Dante, through Trammel, and up to the Nora spur.  There we would pull by the switch to the spur and then back down to the large loadout at Blue Diamond.  We would set off our cab and then shove our 10 empties up above the loadout before pulling back down to pick up our loads.  We put together our train of 25 loads before easing down to the mainline switch.  Our next duty was to call the dispatcher for permission to line out and take our 25 clean loads to the passing siding at Allen, VA, where we would set them off.

Upon arrival at Allen, we were met by an Elkhorn Turn that had been coming south from Elkhorn City.  The crew of the Elkhorn Turn had to set off raw loads in the Allen Extension Track before continuing south to Dante.  Once that job and its pusher finished their work at Allen, we cut off and ran back light to the Nora Spur so we could work the Open Fork loader.  We pulled the raw loads and then waited for the loader's switcher to place some empties that had been brought earlier.   Our work complete, we returned again to Allen, this time backing our raw loads into the Allen Extension Track.  Finally, we would return to our train of 25 loads out of Blue Diamond, couple up to them, and take them south to Dante for weighing.

Our run from Allen to Dante was uneventful.  We arrived in the yard and put away our power.  Almost immediately the yard crew went to work weighing our cars.  We tied our power down and took our rest.  In real time, we worked this job well over an hour.


Both of these railroads reinforced my interest in coalfields railroading, with enough switching to do to keep crews busy for a long period of time.  On the CR&E, the crews of the C80 and C82 Hill Runs can make a three-hour event out of their job very easily.  Some of the mine runs on the K&N District can run for an hour or more as well.  I enjoy this type of operating because I think it makes a crew feel like they are doing work.  There are a lot of elements of realism I observed at both Seth's and Bob's sessions that can be incorporated into CR&E sessions to make operators feel like they have worked a day on the railroad.

My thanks to Seth and Bob for allowing me to operate on your railroads.  I always bring home new ideas from every new railroad I operate on.  I encourage anyone who is interested in operations to take every opportunity to travel to other layouts as well.  What you learn will be invaluable.