Let’s back up a second. My dad has been playing with trains since before I was born, meaning I’ve been around model railroading for my entire life. I remember when we lived in Old Town, ME, we had a layout in our basement. Yet, I never really knew what my dad meant when he was doing to “run trains.” I think I just assumed they put trains on the layout and did whatever they wanted on the tracks. But tonight my perceptions were changed, as I learned what they really do while they are “running trains.”
To my surprise, running trains is a little like role playing. There is a script and a schedule. At one point, someone even called “timeout!” Two trains had run-a-muck… they used some other word for it, but I like run-a-muck better. So there is the person in charge of it all, I suppose he’s the conductor (dad didn’t tell me his title), then there were two station masters (one on each end of the layout) and then there were people signed up to be engineers. So the conductor would tell an engineer that he was clear until a certain stop, while the station masters would manage the lights and the yards. It was a very interesting thing to watch. Especially with the run-a-muck trains.
Dad snuck the Wisconsin and Southern Breast Cancer Awareness boxcar onto the layout. I thought for sure that we were going to get into trouble when someone noticed and told the conductor on me!
The other really exciting part about the visit was that they gave me a scavenger hunt list of scenes on the layout! It’s like they knew how to sell the experience to me! There were some really cool things in the layout. I need to sort and label pictures, but I will post an update before Thursday and you’ll get the full experience!
1 comment:
Suzie557, We knew you how much you love a scavenger hunt so you were pulled into our trap !! HA HA !!
So - the 'conductor' is actually the dispatcher. The dispatcher controls the movement of trains over a railroad. The yard operators at each end of the railroad and the person in charge of a railroad yard is called a 'Yardmaster'. You are exactly right
Everone is role playing and there is an entire aspect of model railroading that focuses on operating the railroad model as if it were a real railroad. SOme use a time table and train orders which was a common means of operating railroads prior to the use of radios out on the railroad. Now a more common approach is centralized traffic control which still uses dispatchers but the dispatchers communicat directly with the train crew whereas in the 'olden days' it was by telegraph to station agents that passed train orders to the train crew as it came by the station.
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