Ever since Matt Snell delivered CWE business car no. 1 to the railroad, I've been thinking about how to incorporate it into an op session. It's been tagged onto the back of priority freights for a number of sessions, but that just didn't seem to do the beautiful car justice. Fortunately, I found some inspiration while surfing the internet recently.
The photo below shows Penn Central SPX-2L, an eastbound inspection train, in May of 1975. It consists of an SD45, a PC caboose that appears to be recently painted, and a PC observation car.
Talk about inspiration- this photo shows exactly the type of movement I wanted to replicate. So I grabbed one of the road's SD45's, one of the newest cabooses, and teamed them up with CWE 1. You can see the results below.
Train cards have been made up for the crews and they can be seen below.
The staging track assignments have been left blank and will be filled in based upon whatever tracks are open during a particular session. A wet erase marker insures that they can be used over and over again.
The photo below shows SPX-10 headed east through Big Chimney.
As my good friend Keith VandeStadt suggested, this train will be a show stopper- everything will have to clear up for it. I'd hate to be the dispatcher that put it in the hole for any reason! And I sure wouldn't want to be the employee that calls it the circus train- at least over the radio. Right, Bill Doll?
