For a map to make sense of the following, click this link:

http://s145079212.onlinehome.us/rr/operations/switching_oakhill/index.htm

The evening of April 4, I found myself at the throttle of BCSJ 29 headed for Oak Hill on the Oak Hill Turn.  Conductor Smith and I were expecting a quiet run but things quickly changed.  OHT runs pretty early in the "day" so things usually are not too congested.  We had a brief wait at Mill Bend after picking up our empty log cars.  We were overtaken by the Bear Creek Hauler West and we followed them up the hill.  Usually, the Bear Creek Hauler East meets Hauler West at Oakhill but for some reason we ended up there before the Hauler East.  The Hauler West was on the Main and we were on the siding when the Hauler East showed up with no way to get by.  The dispatcher asked us to pull our train into the clear on the wye.  It didn't quite fit so we left our caboose on the log track.

The Hauler East needed another warrant to go past Oak Hill and sat blocking us in the wye for nearly an (fast) hour.  While waiting Conductor Smith and I looked over the work we had to do.  We noticed the last crew to switch Oak Hill left an extra box car on the team track and it seemed the string of log cars was longer than usual.  Fortunately, one of the log cars was not loaded yet and we were going to leave it behind.  All together, we counted a total of 18 cars at Oak Hill of which we needed to run around 11 to get our train headed back to Mill Bend and South Jackson yard.  There is a sense of pride that comes with switching Oak Hill without using the Main to run around the train, not to mention you avoid the wrath of the dispatcher or the ribbing of the Superintendent of Nearly Everything.  We knew it would be close and were taking bets if it would be possible to get our work done without using the main.

We started with the log track, it is the easiest.  Pull the loads out behind the caboose, drop the loads and caboose on the main and shove the empties into the spur.  A couple extra moves were needed to get the one extra empty back on the spur but it was simple.  Next we switched the team track which is simply pulling the empty cars and dropping the loaded one.  We shoved the two empty box cars down to the caboose and started on our first trip around the wye.  You have to use the wye to run around cars and turn the engine.  You have to go around it an odd number of times though so you don't have to run back to town tender first. 

We dropped our two empty hopper cars at the base of the wye, cleared the switch and rolled up the west leg and back down the east.  By doing this we ran around the hoppers for the gravel pit and turned our engine.  We then switched the empties for loads at the gravel pit and shoved the whole string of empty and loaded hoppers back up to the pit while we ran around the rest of our train.  That is when it got a little tricky.  The additional box car and what seemed like an extra log car made the train too long to fit in either the base or the east leg of the wye.  There was still a little room left in the gravel pit track so we used the wye to run around the two box cars and shoved them into the gravel pit track.  As long as there were no switchmen riding the sides of the locomotive, the rest of the train then barely fit on the east leg of the wye.

It got really close when, after leaving the  end of the train on the east leg, we ran down the west leg.  There was almost enough room for the engine to clear the points of the west switch.  Sometimes you have to make due...

After the final trip around the wye, everything was on the west end of the engine and the engine was headed east.  We called for a warrant as we got our train put back together and put all the cars on the gravel pit spur on solid rail.

Unfortunately, the extra switching moves and time spent waiting for the Hauler East to clear cost us our window and we had to wait nearly two hours for a warrant back to Mill Bend.  We were so late getting to Mill Bend with our log loads, the Mill Bend Turn was there and very much in the way.  We broke the train ahead of the log cars at the west switch at Mill Bend and the Turn kindly pulled our log loads out of the middle of the train.  Again we reassembled our train and got back to South Jackson 5 minutes before our 12 hours were up.  What would most likely have been a very fustrating day at work made for a very enjoyable evening of model railroading.