The North American Railcar Operators Association [www.narcoa.org] North Central Affiliate organized the event, which began in Parksley, Virginia. A caravan of 26 track cars started out shortly after 9 AM EDT, and headed South towards Cape Charles, VA, on Delmarva's southern-most section of the Eastern Shore Railroad. Before we had traveled an hour, the weather drastically changed, from warm, with a south wind, to a heavy rainstorm. Bob's A4 car has a roof, and side curtains that kept us basically dry and protected from the elements, but many others had open cars with no side walls or curtains, and some even with no roof. Those folks had to endure the brunt of the weather (oy!)
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After lunch, we returned to the rail cars to prepare for the trip back. By this time, the rains have quit, the winds are stiff and cool, and its quite cloudy. And about 20 degrees cooler than it was in the morning when we began. We wanted to turn the caravan around, so we were led thru a series of switches and tracks they locally call the "Y" -- essentially backing up into one section, switching to another track, looping around to another section, then switching back to head north on the main tracks.
The problem with this procedure is some of those old sections of track are not maintained as well as the main lines. Bob had just made the comment that the tracks looked raunchy when all of a sudden -- PLOP ! -- we derailed. Fortuantely, we were not travelling very fast at the time, and Bob had shut down the motor when the derailment occurred. GOt bumped around a bit, I emerged rubbing my left elbow, which had been hit at the impact. Everybody was concerned for my well-being, something that I appreciated. But my "injury" was only an aggravation of an earlier sore elbow, and not a result of anything that had happened there. The task at hand was to assess any damage to the railcar, and get it back on the tracks.
Something interesting I noticed is the first thing lots of folks did was get out the tape measures, and check the width of the rails. Yup, looks like the rails were too far apart, and very dangerous to travel on. After several minutes of jacking, prying, and lifting, the speeder car was back on the tracks, and continued thru to the "Y" switch. At some points along this stretch, there was barely ¼ inch of wheel on the track. The other operators opted to push their cars thru the bad section of track, to help prevent any more derailments. Once we got thru the Y switch, and back on the main rails heading North, the tracks were gauged just fine.
Heading back was not as eventful as the trip down, the rain was done, no more derailments, etc. We did have lots of folks stop their cars and snap some pictures of us as we put-putted along, intrigued by the many different little rail cars passing by. The car beind us fell back several miles at one point, and we stopped and waited for them to catch up. Once they got back to the rest of the caravan, we noticed he was being pushed by the car behind him. He had been having some troubles with his rig, but a can a gas was all he needed
. Once he got some gas his engine sputtered back to life, and he was under his own power again.
We arrived back at Parksley at about 5:30 PM, after which many of the participants went to an all-you-can-eat spaghetti dinner at the local fire house.
All in all, it was something new and different for us, a day we will remember for years to come
Thanks, Bob !!
-Ken
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