Bear Creek and South Jackson Operations - BC&SJ III Op Sessions - Nov 4, 2006
New Oakhill Scenery


BC&SJ III Op Session Gallery
November 4, 2006


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Saturday, November 4, 2006

The previous session (Oct 7th) worked well enough I decided to try it again. The crew call rounded up 10 victims, er... crew members! Even though the night was cold and wet and very stormy they braved the elements to run trains. What a bunch of guys!

I had changed the train line up around in an attempt to give the YM a little more breathing room between trains arriving at South Jackson. I also had started including blocking directions on the train sheets. This turned out to be especially important for trains DSHE, DSHW, and SJHW. If DSHE leaves Redland after the block swap there with the received block being a mismash, it makes the South Jackson YM really grumpy when he has to sort all the non-Pocatello cars out of that block while DSHE sits in his yard blocking the way. The last session this happened just about the time the hottest train on the railroad came rolling toward the yard. Talk about pressure!

I also managed to get the cars on the RIP track fixed and got SP&S 79, an Atlas RS3 back into operation. And to prove I'm a nice guy I figured out a way to hack one more track into the South Jackson yard. It's short and stub ended but the YM wasn't complaining!

Len who was YM last session took that position again. Because we had a bit larger crew Matt (a first timer at the BC&SJ) became the yard assistant.

Jordan agreed to dispatch so I could roam the aisles looking for trouble and zapping everything in sight with flash on my camera.

Mike who took the Redland local switcher (a sort of mini YM postion) took that job again to see if he could figure it out this time.

The session started off with a bang. The Mill Bend turn was the first train out and was quickly followed by 3 others. The railroad was running at about capacity with 4 road crews busy plus the yard job and the Redland local job.

Jordan, who hasn't dispatched the BC&SJ with TWC for about 2 years had a few troubles at one point ending up with three trains staring each other down at Deschutes Jct. With the Mill Bend turn still in Mill Bend this made for interesting conversation between the crews as they waited to see how things would get sorted out.

But they did get sorted out. Len's assistant got bored because nothing much was happening in the yard and jumped on the Oak Hill turn - just before a deluge of trains started queuing for the yard. Ain't the at way it always works? But we were short a crew and the OHT needed to go out so off Matt (a pro) went. Len managed to hang on and yard wasn't a bottleneck.

Overall we ran 13 freights and 1 passenger train over about 3 1/2 hours. Next time I'm hoping that with everyone a bit more experienced we can get that down to 3 hours if some waiting-in-sidings can be eliminated.

We all seemed to have a good time!

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