member who is good at it, and he stepped up and started.
Rick had done it previously. He stepped up, and then slowly
but surely some of us said, okay, I’ll give it a try. The way we
do that is by having an assistant dispatcher.
“You sit down with one of the experienced ones, watch them,
they school you in how to fill out the warrants. We operate
on a warrant system that is transcribed across the radio to the
conductor or engineer. So it’s like, when you’re ready you take
it on yourself without help.
“We’ve been able to increase to about 10 people who can
dispatch.”
Rick:
“Going into phase 2 with more of the mainline running
attracted more guys into dispatching, because phase 1 was
Columbia Cascade and Western - 11
13: Each freight car has its own card, and traffic is
generated by assigning waybills. A limited number of
“spot cards” regulates the flow of cars from Albany,
Lebanon, and Bend to destinations on the modeled
part of the railroad.
13
pretty intense. More of the mainline was double-tracked and
it was high density industries, so you got a lot of switching and
you’ve got to plan your moves ahead and you’ve got two yards
that you have to navigate through – the locals had to come out
and do their work.
“But when it got to phase 2, things are stretched out. There’s
not so much pressure on the guy who’s dispatching – it became
more fun. Guys who did dispatch on phase 1, when they would
come and dispatch on phase 2, they loved it.
“The least glamorous job that nobody wants, is back in stag-
ing. You’re in this room, putting trains together, tearing trains
down – there’s some guys that like it, but when we draw for
jobs that’s usually the last one to go.
“Some like to just sit back and watch how things play out. Then
they’ll have an idea of how the layout operates. It’s probably
a good idea to be on a pool crew for a while so you kind of get
the lay of the land and learn the layout.”
MRH:
“Okay, along those lines – track warrant control now, are
there any thoughts to timetable and train order, adding signal-
ing in the future, maybe CTC?”
Rick:
“To answer your first question – no. No timetable and
train order. Not that it would not be fun, but I think most of the
members would get really confused over it.”
“I was skeptical of track warrants until I actually went down
and operated on Joe Fugate’s layout and saw how track war-
rants work, and listened on the radio, and found out that this
works quite well.
“On our original layout, we had Direct Traffic Control and you
had nothing to check box anything. It was all verbal. So you
MRH-Feb 2013
