Review by Casey
 

Review—NERP 090-01, 02 and 03 by HiLine (Jerry Matthews, of Orlando Florida)

If you’re an engineer who really enjoys hauling long, heavy trains over the sort of rugged rural real estate that has a pronounced vertical component, then you’ll really like what Jerry Matthews has done with this trio of coal-dragging activities for Raton Pass.  These acts will test your skills while they make an interesting story that’ll be sure to keep your attention throughout the series.

Here, you’re the operator of a twice-weekly, routine coal delivery from Wyoming to San Diego. In this case, however, lengthy repairs to the main have pooched the “routine”, and operations are rather hectic as everybody – including yourself – tries to clear the backlog. You start-off in the first act heading for Trinidad, Colorado hauling 40 loaded Bethgons behind a pair of stately AC6000CWs and a trusty old SD40-2. You must make a pick-up in Trinidad and then take the whole caboodle over the pass to Raton.

Watch your step with this pick-up;  get it wrong and you could find yourself in a bit of trouble.  And then, climbing the Pass with this particular lash-up is no easy feat.  It requires a deft hand on the power lever as you strive to keep the amps in the green without stalling the train. Not quite a sight-seeing tour, that’s for certain!

Having arrived in Raton, you begin the second act with some housekeeping before picking-up your train again, along with a healthy handful of empty hoppers, as you work out onto the main and get underway.  It’s a 25-mile jaunt down the line to French, where you take the branch line out to the York Canyon Mine – 35 miles and almost all of it uphill! Jerry explains that the reason for hauling the entire loaded coal train up to the mine is that there was a short window of time to move everything without a major impact on thru traffic. So conditions preclude parking the loaded train and just taking the empty hoppers. “All the more fun,” says you, the stalwart, steely-eyed NERR engineer.

The third act opens at the mine, where things appear to be just hunky-dory and smugly routine. But then comes the truly interesting part (Warning: “interesting” here is a euphemism for “difficult”!) Once you’ve coupled your original train to the long string of additional coal cars, you then find yourself in charge of a truly long, heavy train, whose immediate destination is the end of the branch line – all of it downhill!  If you’ve ever wanted an “interesting” training run that’s nicely tailored to giving you lots of hands-on experience in downhill braking, then this, Me Son, is the activity for you!

Once back on the mainline, it’s a pleasant trip along to Las Vegas, with lots of practice on the power lever and dynamic brakes.  But note I said “to” Las Vegas. As you begin to relax at the end of your epic journey, a word of caution is in order here, and that word is “slow”!   Eleven miles past Onava, the switch leading to the Las Vegas siding appears to show “50” on the Track Monitor, like all the ones preceding it.  Better look again!  If you go smoking past that switch with the “Las Vegas” sign while you’re doing 50 then you’re in a heap of trouble!  Read that number as “30”;  but while you’re at it, try 20!  You’ll see!

NERP 090-1,-2,-3 is a marvelously fun series that you’ll want to run again fairly soon after you’ve completed it.  What’s even better, Jerry promises that the journey will continue on the Glorieta Pass route. The first leg of that section (from Las Vegas to Lamy) has been submitted to the feasibility team, and it will soon be followed by a side trip to Santa Fe while waiting for opposing traffic to clear.  I can barely wait, Jerry.  Many thanks!

 

-Casey