In the last episode I described what had to be done to prepare for an operating session.  I’ve got my controller, I’ve got my car cards and waybills, and we’re off.  Well, if you’re wise – not quite.

The first and probably the most important thing any wise operator should do is to quickly thumb through the cards and work out what we’ve got to do, do the cards match the cars in our train?  Are all the waybills for stations and industries we are going to call at?  If not why not?  Which industries will have to be switched (shunted) on the outwards journey and which on the return journey?  And are the cars in the right order to make this happen or do they need rearranging before you start?

And then it was “Plug in your controller”, take the necessary actions on the control panel to make your train move and then speak to the Despatcher for permission to move off.  On Peter’s CORy lines that was achieve by calling over to him and asking permission to move off, on a bigger layout the operators all wear headsets and strict and realistic voice protocols have to be observed.

And just a word about those “necessary actions on the control panel”; this layout was built pre-DCC so you will probably guess that that the wiring was a bit of a nightmare.  The simplest way to describe how it worked is Cab Control – but there were 6 possible cabs.  Cab selection was by way of a rotary switch with an on-off toggle switch in the output line; to select your cab you switched the output off, turned the rotary switch to your cab number and then turned the toggle switch back on.  The practice was to set your train rolling and drive it to a predefined stop just ahead of the next industry or station; stop, unplug controller, set the panel you are leaving to Cab 6, walk to the next control panel, set that to your cab number and then bring your train “in”.  The one thing you don’t do on a system like that is just turn the rotary switch because as sure as eggs are eggs you will pass a “live” cab and your train will lurch either forwards or backwards as it momentarily gets full throttle and (worst case) will fall off the layout.  Trust me, I did it one evening, it’s embarrassing.

The Despatcher sets the road out of the classification yard up to the first junction – and we’re off, to our first stop. 

On arrival at the first stop – a station with a passing loop – the train pulled up in the siding (loop).  A quick scan of the waybills told me that I needed to drop off one car to a factory at that location.  The rule was that if you were dropping a car off then you took the one that had been at that location for the longest time.  Car cards for the cars at that location we held on a hook in a foldback clip.  You put the card for the car you were dropping off on the bottom of the pile, the waybill that had brought it to that location in a separate clip, and then removed the car card from the top of the pile noting whether there was a waybill in it; if there was you had to work out what to do with the car, if there wasn’t you simply took it back to the classification yard at the end of your duty. 

And then the fun really starts. 

You need to work out the most efficient way of dragging the car you need to drop off out of your train and dragging the car you need to collect out of whichever spur it is in and putting it back in the train.  I had several DOS based games that I could use to practice the mental agility skills during quiet moments in the office. 

The next event up the line is a spur – we have a car to drop but we can’t deal with it now because it’s a facing connection which means we’ll have to do it on the way back.

Now we’re at a spur with a trailing connection that we can deal with.  We need to drop a car which means we need to pick one up too. 

Same routine as before: pull the car card for the one we are dropping; remove and stow the waybill; put the car card on the bottom of the pile; remove the car card from the top of the pile; this one has still has a waybill in it which says that the car we are collecting has to be taken to the top end of the line and left in an exchange siding to be collected by an east-west train operated by a different company.  The switching here is pretty straightforward as the spur splits into two half way along its length and it’s simply dropping a car in the empty arm and collecting the outbound one from the other arm.  The car we need to drop is in the centre of our train so we split it, pulling the car to be dropped forward and then setting back into the spur.  Having dropped the inbound car and collected the outbound one we re-check the waybill and realise that the outbound car has to be marshalled at the rear of our train so we leave that car at the end of the spur, re-couple to the train, draw forward and then set back again onto the car awaiting collection.  And we’re off again.

Say again despatch, over.

The next “event” is another station with a siding (loop).  Despatch have just told us to get to the siding as fast as we can, a passenger train has been diverted and is heading our way.  Rush, rush, rush…

We make it and the passenger train doesn’t have to stop and wait for us.  Passenger train out of the way, we have two cars to drop so two to collect, the spurs are at either end of the station complex and with a bit of careful switching we can shunt both of them in this direction meaning we don’t have to stop here again on the way south.  All done and we’re off again, just in time to get the message from Despatch “Go for Beans!” – time for coffee and a donut.  Next stop is the head of the line.  This needs us to contact Despatch again as we are joining an east-west route.  Now, where’s that coffee?

We have three cars to drop, two we brought with us from Chelan Yard and the one we picked up on the way up.  We check the car cards/waybills and find that there are 4 cars in the exchange siding that need to go down to Chelan so we switch those around, re-marshal the train so that the one car we need to drop on the southbound trip is at the rear of the train (saves time, trust me).

Despatch, this is train 123, request permission to hold CORy southbound, and we’re off again.

As we approach the first station Despatch tell us to take the siding and await a bulk train coming north to pass us.  Curses, that slows us down but at least we did all the shunting we needed to here on the way north, or did we?  Check waybills for the cars we picked up at the exchange sidings, no, they are all for industry south of Chelan.  The bulk car carrier comes through, we check with Despatch and we’re off again.  We do the one-car exchange as we pass the last spur before Chelan, talk to despatch and roll back into the yard.

Now, our turn of duty doesn’t end here; we talk to the Chelan Yardmaster and learn that the other operators who are working the east-west lines that pass through Chelan have picked up several cars that need to go south on the CORy to an industry at Entiat and for the exchange sidings at the southern end of the line.  This is in addition to the ones we have picked up at northern end of the line, all destined to this section of the line as well.  As a favour the Yardmaster re-marshals our train (I haven’t been cleared for that control panel yet) so I grab a second coffee but decline a second donut.

Despatch this is Train 123, request to take CORy southern section.  Off we go.

Basically, this leg of our journey is more of the same.  We drop half the cars in our remarshalled train at Entiat, the rest at the exchange sidings and then head north again dragging a motley collection of cars from there to Chelan to be classified for the next operating session.  When we arrive in Chelan we pull the controller for the last time, check that the car cards/waybills really do match the train we have just brought in and pass the whole lot over to Despatch.  We then get our hours logged (if you were trying to clock up hours for an NMRA operators award this was important).  Thank Peter for his hospitality and home to bed.