Operators are DUMB!

 Operators are DUMB! And, I want to make this really clear, I’m at the top of this list. I can remember designing and building a yard in such a way that a passing train could stop and pick-up and set-out blocks in five minutes or less. I tested it multiple times myself. I operated it during a session, myself. Once I turned it over to an operating crew it never worked. Delays were rife. What was wrong? What couldn’t they see that was so plain to me? I concluded they were just dumb. 

Then I’d go to another layout and make the dumbest, STOOPIDEST (yes STOOPID with two “O’s”*) mistakes it was plain that I was an idiot.

When it comes to just about everything else in the world, I’m pretty dumb, just ask my wife. When it comes to model railroad operations I don’t think I’m stupid. But when I’m doing a job on a layout I’m focused on that task. I no longer see plainly visible  solutions to simple tasks that do not specifically pertain to my job at hand. I lose the big picture.

As I’ve grown older I’ve come to believe that we’re all pretty much the same. We like to think no one else has ever experienced what we are going through, but they have, millions of times. They go from pretty smart, clever, resourceful layout owners and builders to knuckleheads once that throttle is in their hand on your layout. (How do you reduce a model railroaders IQ by 50%? Put a throttle in their hands)

How can this be? I think it’s the switch from having to always think about the big picture on their layouts to having to think about the little picture when doing a job on your layout. Macro to micro.

It’s the same with reading instructions. Everyone agrees that layout owners must communicate the jobs to the crews. And everyone, and I MEAN everyone refuses to read instructions. 

“Paul, where does this car go?”**

“It’s on line 2 of your instruction sheet”. I think I should start charging for answers. One dollar for every question, with the understanding that you GET a dollar if the answer isn’t in the train brief. I think I’d still make money.

None of these guys are dumb, they’re just focused. I’ve got a new saying, 

“Man, that guy is really focused!”



*This was a saying from my work, as in, “Man! That guy is stupid with two O’s!”, meaning dumb as a box of rocks, a sack of door knobs, …

** on AIR1 my waybills for off layout movement were labeled: WM, EAST, SOUTH, WEST. That’s it. In huge font. “Where does this car go?”, “What does the waybill read?”, “WEST…”, “Then it goes WEST”, “That’s what I thought but wasn’t sure”


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wingedfoot Paper Part 2: Pulpwood

 On AIR1 a large, centrally located industry, was Wingedfoot Paper. As Jon Cure is fond of saying, a paper mill is the perfect Model Railroad industry. The major raw material is wood pulp. In 1952  pulpwood, cut and stacked like cord wood, was shipped to mills in a variety of cars. Nearly any car you can name was used, or modified in such a way as to become, a pulpwood hauler. Generally pulpwood was not valuable enough to travel far. The collection of pulpwood racks I have,  needs a great deal of repainting and re-lettering.  I just don’t think it’s likely to see Atlantic Coast Line cars hauling pulpwood into central WV! I have been toying with the idea of repainting cars from distant foreign roads and just adding a simplified lettering, using the premise that they are not for interchange. We’ll see. [4/19/22 this afternoon I went through the box of pulpwood cars. I think with only a few exceptions I’m going to have to repaint these flats and letter them for the AIR....
Read more

Freight House Operations: LCL and Freight Houses

 LCL is a huge source of revenue, car loading, and tonnage for railroads of the steam era. By the end of WWII numbers dropped fast, mainly due to trucks and roads. But to be honest LCL continued to be a big part of railroading. Today all that UPS traffic is LCL. There has been a lot of discussion of late about how to implement LCL  on a model railroad. My feeling is I do not want to perform a function by simply standing and counting off the seconds, pretending to off load LCL packages. What I did on AIR1 was to print up Waybills that simulated packages of LCL.  The peddler car was placed in the consist of a local, the car card for the peddler car had multiple bills in it, and as the local got to each depot, the train crew would check their LCL bills to check for a set out. You did not set out the car, you set out the BILL.  I extended this procedure for REA packages, US Mail, passengers, and now I plan to add this function for loaded milk cans, but more on all that l...
Read more

Freight House Operations: LCL from Foreign Road Freight Houses

 On AIR 1 while WM , N&W, CRR, and VGN trains had trackage rights over some or all of the layout, there were no freight houses for these foreign roads. Often in towns served by two or more competing lines one will find a freight house for each of these roads. In Winchester, VA the freight houses for the PRR and the B&O still stand today. On AIR 2 I do not plan model the extensive trackage rights as on the first layout. I plan to have these foreign roads to come on to the layout via either a short run of their track, visibly modeled, terminating at an interchange point, or simply a transfer from an off layout staging yard. In short fairly limited presence. However at each of these interchange points there should be some foreign road structures in their colors to give strong visual clues that these tracks do indeed belong to someone else. In a few cases, WM and N&W  for sure, some of these foreign road structures will be a freight house. Again, relying on the Kalmbac...
Read more