(Sorta) Working on the Real Railroad

There is currently a lively discussion going on the Pennsylvania Reading Seashore Lines Historical Society about railfans not doing well working on a real railroad. Most railroad jobs certainly didn't have much glory and excitement, but rather a lot of hard work under difficult conditions.

I think I probably had the best job of "sorta" working for the railroad. In the early 1990s I was a computer consultant for General Electric Consulting and got my dream assignment at Conrail for 6 months. I got to work at the old Food Fair building near Drexel University. (Where you could look out and down the window from around the 15th floor and watch someone breaking into your car in the parking lot below.) We were working on a system that enabled the people who handled freight orders to identify the incoming call telephone number and put the customer's order history on the screen so the agents could intelligently talk to the customers about their needs. Unfortunately Conrail had 2 disappointing financial quarters in a row which meant they immediately got rid of all the programming consultants to save money.

They got a significant portion of their in-house programming staff from short educational programming schools like Computer Learning Center. Although most were very good programmers they knew little of railroading or transportation. I remember explaining to several of them what a caboose was ("those odd looking blue cars"). We did have a few former brakemen who were retrained as programmers after they were partially incapacitated after railroad related injuries.

The highlight was when one of their in-house people snuck me into the "blue room" where the track diagrams showed the track and all the trains on them. They didn't have a big screen, just a series of computer monitors where you could see the trains moving from one monitor to the next.

The other fun event was seeing requests come in on the printer with agents asking for help ("has anyone seen...") finding lost railroad cars that had escaped their tracking.

I still despise the CSX president who stabbed Conrail in the back during their merger. Philly was to be the combined operations HQ if it had gone as planned.

Choices & Influences

In one of my (very) rare philosophical moods, I was pondering what leads me to do certain modeling tasks. The first choices are easy, you collect ideas along the way of things you would like to do when you have the time. Loving Pennsylvania RR steam engines (Belpaire fireboxes and all that) I wanted to model the Pennsylvania RR early on (after an earlier fling with Great Northern's dashing Green/Orange streamliners (and more Belpaire fireboxes)). Marrying a lovely young lady from Pennsylvania finally got me off the GN and permanently onto the PRR.

However always in the back of my mind was the PRSL that ran by, a block away, from my house (oh how I wish I could remember the steam engines). I knew I would like to model it but I was certainly not drawn to the ugly boxy drab black Baldwin road switchers. (Why couldn't we have some of the brightly colored diesels that other roads had in the 50s? Or at least some sharks, which only ran on the other portions of the PRSL).

But I knew that someday I would probably be drawn back to do the towns in which I grew up, in spite of the ugly engines and lack of mountains. There was just that overwhelming desire to be drawn back to those youthful memories.

So you have that list of "like to do"s, but when they are done, what next? Reflecting on my choices I am surprised that my firm independent nature has been influenced so much by others (since I definitely would not fit well into a follower grouping.)

A visitor to my layout planted a seed to join a model railroad forum. That influence, and curiosity, led me to investigate that and provided further insights and guidance. He also encouraged me to start a blog on constructing the new layout, something I would probably never have done otherwise. That led to a creative outlet which in turn pushed me to learn more about model photography, another aspect that I probably wouldn't have undertaken.

The forum itself drives a lot of mixed feelings. Inspiration can be found there, friendship and encouragement also. But the honey also draws flies. You occasionally run across some folks, that if Darwinism actually were true, should have been eliminated from the human gene pool by now, for the benefit of mankind.

Reaching the end of the "have to do" list I have found myself being directed by suggestions that I normally wouldn't have bothered with - handrails, sidewalks, etc. That is good, but it still takes a friendly attitude to move me that way, otherwise my back gets up and my stubbornness sets in. There are other suggestions that still don't move me, no matter how friendly the impetus. Anachronisms bother pure modelers but only the  most gross affect me. I guess I enjoy the bests of both worlds. You can bet, that if I can scrounge up the money, a Norfolk Southern PRR decorated GE GEVO will grace the rails of my 1950s PRSL!