Getting Real column - 12
13. An hour after the departure of the Log Train from
Merced Falls, the Merced Local arrived and made its
pickups and setouts. Here No. 29 carefully spots a
Great Northern box car along the planing mill shipping
dock. It will have plenty of time to complete this work
(and its other work) before leaving Merced Falls an
hour and 15 minutes after arrival (10 actual minutes).
13
meets or a departure time. It is not a hard and fast rule, but
I like operators to get completely immersed in the time and
place being modeled. Ideally, by the end of the operating ses-
sion they will have felt that, for a few hours, they were actu-
ally operating a real train in a real place on a warm day in
August 1939.
Pictures continue on the following pages ...
14. No. 11, the daily Rock Train, departed El Portal
at 8:10 a.m. this morning, running light with just its
caboose. It is now around 10:30 a.m. and the 4-4-0
has left its caboose on the main and backed into the
siding at Emory to pick up the loaded YV rock cars.
14
MRH-Nov 2014
