On March 31st the A&O hosted a morning + afternoon op session for an entourage of experienced operators from Tulsa and Kansas City. A contingent of A&O regulars also attended as consultants. Special thanks to KT for a fabulous lunch.
Sorry I don't have names for all these faces, but here are the few photos I managed to take during the session. And remember that if you want to see a closeup of any photo thumbnail, just click on it to zoom in.
Jared held down the Dispatchers's desk. I trained him on the peculiarities of the A&O machine and he did a
fantastic job.
Here are more grab shots in no particular order.
An empty coal train headed north across the Twin Creek Viaduct. Soon an impromptu photo line of folks stacked up. These locomotives built from P&D kits appeared on the cover of a 2006 issue of Model Railroader. Each currently has a 2" high-bass speaker in an enclosure.
On the distant right the Grand Floridian passenger train would soon pass over the Ohio River on the connecting bridge.
I overheard several comments about the sound coming from the "giant speakers" in A&O locomotives.
The Floridian soon crossed the Ohio River behind two of David's Atlas F3s. These sport Tang Band T1-2025 speaker modules that produce a lot of bass due to their large passive radiators.
A general freight heads from West Virginia to Ohio as it starts across the Ohio River bridge complex behind Alco C425 #475. The dynamic brakes would soon whine to take the train down the ruling grade towards Millport OH.
A loaded coal train just arrived at the Hatfield Coal Company rotary. Here an operator pulls off the caboose and parks it safely on the caboose arrival track. Soon the loads will be pulled off the tail of the arriving train and shoved across the Whiting Rotaside for emptying. These are all live loads.
The rotary is controlled using the green circled pushbutton visible on the fascia. Once started the dump cycle runs automatically and is synchronized with sound recorded from a real Whiting Rotaside dumper.
Here's the road power, an Alco FA1-FB1-FA1 consist that brought the loads to the rotary arrival track.
Later the B&O ran north on the A&0 mainline to exchange a few cars at International Paper, then it headed into Millport for the midpoint of that turn.
Millport yardmaster Craig herded cats.
What hump?
Heading to the home terminal past the end of CTC.
Operating at the Morrison prep plant. Dirty coal in, clean coal out.
John Parker held down the Ricksburg yard job. Here he answers the Dispatcher on the telephone system.
Ricksburg sorts through car cards to plan his next moves with the Alco S4 yard switcher far left.
An aging Alco RS36 switched the 28 foot long paper mill. That job can take all day! (I've been there and done that job...)
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