A photo for you all: It’s 4:25 a.m. on September
14, 1994, well before dawn, at CP 277 on Conrail’s Onondaga Cutoff. The
Mohawk Dispatcher has lined TV-8W, an eastbound stack train from Chicago to
Worchester, Massachusetts, on Track 2 around WADE-30 (stopped at left)
and SEEL, whose headlight is visible in the distance. TV-8W's approaching headlight illuminates the signal bridge for just a few seconds.
One
thing that has surprised me over the course of the development of the
Onondaga Cutoff is how much satisfaction I take from hosting an
operating session. In the past, I’ve always enjoyed the building part of the hobby.
Operations was something that came later, largely thanks to my interest
in prototype operations, and the steady influence of Jack, my longtime
friend and partner in all things railroad. During the design phase of
this layout, it was apparent that this project would be much larger than any I
had constructed before, and therefore could be fun with multiple
operators. Still, I generally imagined running trains myself more than I
thought about any organized operations. That changed in a hurry after
the tracks were in place and operational! It was quickly apparent that
some sort of organization was needed to avoid chaos. Paperwork was
part of the operation from the beginning, but has taken on a critical
role for each session now. Thanks to the fact that the track design is
as prototypical as the space would allow, operations really came very
naturally to the layout.
Over
the next few blog entries, I plan to present some of the paperwork we
use to make it all happen. Once a month, the Onondaga Cutoff comes to
life, and for a few hours, it feels like 1994 all over again.
