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What Time Does the 1 PM Train Leave?–Part 2

December 23rd, 2009

When we last left our intrepid blogger, I was telling you about what a wonderful job we do this time of year running the Whippany Railway Museum’s Santa Claus Special, and how great it was running a scheduled railroad for these trains, and how a great time was being had by all.  And, for the most part, that describes how the season was going.

That is, until December 13.

Now don’t think I have anything against the day.  In fact, I am kind of fond of it, since it is my birthday.  However, things got a little squirrely starting at 11:00am.  See, we had a bit of a rain storm, which, when the rain contacted the very cold ground, turned to ice.  Black ice.  Those of you who live in the warmer climates are probably not familiar with this type of frozen water, but in this part of the world we get it with this type of weather, and there is nothing that I can think of with less friction.  In the space of an hour there were accidents all over the place on the roads, so many in fact that the police resorted to just shutting some roads down for a while until they could catch up with the clean up.  It took about an hour for everything to warm up enough that the roads were just wet, and then we had to think about running our Santa trains, which were scheduled for 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5pm.

We got enough of a crew to Whippany to operate the trains, and at 12:50, one of the museum people comes up to me and says, “We have a small problem.  Santa is stuck in traffic.”  Not good.  In 18 years of running these trains, we have never had to think of plan B.  Now we had to come up with one.  We waited (with a close to full train), and as the bottom of the hour approached, we had a decision to make.  Do we cancel the train entirely?  Or, should we run the train without Santa, and offer the passengers who were there some compensation for the fact that we could not provide what we had promised for that trip?  In the end, we ran the trip sans St. Nick, and most people understood the circumstances (there was one customer who called later to complain and tell us that her children were scarred for life, and we gave her a refund).  Santa did arrive in time for the next train, and we ran the rest of the schedule that day 30 minutes late.  Not exactly your choice for an ideal day, but in the end the majority of the people were happy.

So, after that fun day, did the next weekend run smoothly?  Yes, but there was the snow storm.  We got hit by the big storm that blanketed the East Coast, and it made for two very interesting days that weekend.  On Saturday we ran waiting for the snow to start, and when it did at about 2:00pm, it made for some picturesque railroading.  By the time we finished the last run of the day, the snow was really coming down and we were very happy to be heading home.  The next day was one of the busiest days on the trips that we have had in many years.  The snow had ended (we got about 10 inches), the sun came out, and it was a bright, beautiful day.  We ran six trips, and they were for the most part full.  We were tired when it was all over, but this was the most successful season of trips we have ever had.  We ran 25 trains over the five days, and we carried somewhere in the range of 7,000 passengers.

And a good time was had by all (except, maybe for the mother of the children who were scarred for life).

—By Steve Friedland

steven-fb.jpgSteve Friedland is a child of the railroad industry.  Following summers and vacations working on the track gang for the family-owned Morristown & Erie Railway, a 42-mile New Jersey short line, he started full-time in 1994.  He has worked in all areas of the railroad, including track, mechanical, signals, and operations, and currently is a member of the management team for the company as director of operations in Morristown, N.J. In 1999, he founded Short Line Data Systems, a provider of railroad EDI and dispatching software, AEI hardware, and management consulting to the short line industry.  He also served as  chairman of the ASLRRA’s Technology Committee for the past four years.

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