Business must be good today as the Hill Freight departs Jasperdale with two Alco road switchers, the backbone of the D&H (above) roster. Cars in northbound trains are almost all loads destined for industries at Fenimore and the freighthouse
CHRIS D’AMATO
or team track at Sonnyvale. On another day, two 1,000 h.p. S-4’s are having an easy time of it, almost coasting downgrade through Jasperdale on their way to Junction (below). A few hours earlier, they struggled with a 14-car northbound train.
see where all 25 or so cars are located. True to his past, however, Jim is al- ready eyeing the track list provided by the yard clerk (me) and noting the loca- tions of cars he’ll need for his train, es- pecially cars which are headed to the same destination and are already cou- pled together.
Bill starts his freshly-painted light- ning-striped RS-3. On the Lake George branch, an almost two percent grade out of Fort Edward meant that trains weighing more than 600 tons earned a second RS-3. Since the Sonnyvale branch has a similar grade, Bill offered a yardmaster’s old rule of thumb to quickly determine when we need a sec- ond unit. “Figure loads at 80 tons and empties at 30 tons.” Close enough. This morning,
Bill’s already com- RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN
plaining that his RS-3, programmed with momentum, isn’t getting up to speed fast enough. To a yardmaster who once presided over a long, 13-track yard, an RS-3 was measured by how fast it could stop, change direction, and speed up. Jim tells him to “Pipe down” in the kind of back-and-forth banter that makes us glance at each other and smile. A frequent guest who has oper- ated on many layouts says what he val- ues most about Jim, Bill, and other railroaders who join us is “the air of the prototype that they bring. There’s certainly not as much romance as many modelers would think.” Radios were just coming into limited use in my era, so the two assemble their train according to Jim’s hand sig- nals. Occasionally, we communicate by
voice. “One car…half a car…okayyyyy toooo stop.” We used to think nothing of uncoupling cars anywhere in the yard, but we’ve been admonished that rail- roaders don’t like to walk. Jim often re- minds us to “pull the pin” up near the clearance point at the head of yard tracks and spurs “or else some poor conductor or trainman’s gonna have to walk or ride the side of a car all the way in there to make a hitch.” All that extra work, we’re reminded, also interferes with the “early quit”– the unwritten railroad practice of go- ing about one’s work without undue de- lay so as to call it a day as early as possible. Shuffling cars with minimal moves is a skill not acquired in one ses- sion. New conductors often make all sorts of extra work for themselves,
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