PCCM 43 G -- The Virtual Ops Session Heads West!

This post is a continuation of the Penn Central Car Movement series that takes up from Ralph V's post on his blog here. The series began on John R's New York Central Train Layout blog here. On John R's layout, two cars were headed from Terminal Yard to my Los Feliz and North Western. LFNW 160, an RBL car, is loaded with beer from the Heileman Brewing Company in Empire City to the West Egg team track on the LF&NW. GN 3630 is loaded with shrink wrapped hides for the Pot of Oakland on the Western Pacific. The routing is PC - CB&Q Cicero - D&RGW - WP.

Things often go wrong for some reason when LFNW 160 leaves the PC. This time, the car, along with GN 3630, somehow got routed onto a D&RGW local heading west from Denver. Nevertheless, 1:87 Sir Neal, 1;87 AtJoe, and 1:87 Larry somehow got wind of the move and were waiting at East Portal to shoot the cars on their way west:

Scenery is still just roughed in here.

On the west slope, the train passes through Terrible:

Behind the train is the East Terrible Mill and its tailings pile.

A day or so later, we're on the Western Pacific, not long after Mr Perlman's arrival from Penn Central. The green wasn't his idea, but now that we see it, we know he's around. Here we're in eastern Nevada:

That must be SP paired track on the left.

In contrast to the D&RGW local, it looks like LFNW 160 and GN 3630 have found their way onto an APF, Auto Parts Forwarder, hotshot. A BN Alco is in today's consist:

Manhattan Transfer on the LF&NW is masquerading as Oakland here. WP 707, as on the prototype, is working as a heavy switcher shoving our interchange cars to their destination:

As in Oakland, there's lots of street running in West Egg:

As it happens, Pier 27, the destination for the shrink-wrapped hides in GN 3630, is on the same lead as the West Egg team track, the destination for the beer in LFNW 160:

Here's a better view of Pier 27, which is a Fos Scale kit, sitting behind a Walthers car float:

Regarding the shrink-wrapped hides, my uncle came to work for Mr Perlman at Western Pacific not long after Perlman himself arrived there. As Sr Vice President -- Marketing, his job was to find new traffic. One source was a shipper wanting to ship hides for export to Japan. Mr Perlman blew his top. "HIDES?? You’ll turn those cars into STINKERS!” My uncle countered that the hides would be shrink wrapped. In fact, he had an example downstairs. Did Mr Perlman want to have a look? Mr Perlman said “That won’t be necessary”.

My uncle has always made the point that railfan authors who call him "Al Perlman" never knew the man. He was "Mr Perlman" to everyone.

The virtual ops session will now return to Ralph V's blog!