Thursday, February 1, 2018

The boxcar that wouldn't move...

After the last operating session, I walked around the railroad to check things out. The photo below shows what I found at Logan, WV.































The PC covered hopper car and the SOO boxcar were spotted on the team track by the crew of BC-10/11 which works Logan before heading east to Big Chimney. The CWE boxcar was already there when BC-10/11 arrived and was supposed to be picked up. As can be seen on the car card below, the boxcar is headed to Monticello, GA and has a TIBS symbol of C1.






























This is the second op session in a row that this car wasn't picked up. So I checked the town chart shown below.































The town chart clearly shows that BC-10/11 should pick up any cars with a TIBS symbol of A through G and take them to Big Chimney. So clearly the crews weren't reading the town charts. However, the regular operators are all very experienced and have run the railroad many times before. So there must be something that is telling the crews not to pick up these cars. A quick check of the train card revealed the problem- there was no reference to making any pick-ups at Logan. So the train card for BC-10/11 has been revised as shown below.








































Hopefully, this change will get CWE 22167 back on the road. And it's a good thing that I checked the documentation before calling out the crews. The crow sandwich that would have resulted from that mistake would have tasted awful!

2 comments:

  1. If you were modeling Penn Central, leaving the car there for weeks could be considered prototypical...

    ReplyDelete
  2. I just figured the car had a stuck hand brake and the crew of BC-10/11 was short on time....highball

    ReplyDelete