Day 3 with this train, and boy did things go south on this day for this train. I'd suggest you grab a cold one & relax because this is going to be a long one to explain. After finally getting a crew in Atlanta at 12:50am, CSX decided to combine it with U735 at Emerson since it was due to the loadout on the CV sub in two days & there were no crews available for it. Somehow, someway, the dispatcher bulletin on the now combined train ever got updated, showing it to be shorter than it actually was. Going off of this info, the new dispatcher, who went on duty after it combined & going off of the old info, arranged for it & Q541 to meet at Fairy (north of Chatsworth), thinking K444 would fit in the siding. Naturally, the whole subdivision came to a grinding halt when he discovered that neither train would fit. After a couple of hours trying to hatch a plan to solve the problem, this is what he came up with. G378, which was dropping off a train at Pilgrims Pride in Ranger, came north with its power to take the ethanol half of the train back south to Coniston (south of Chatsworth) so Q541 could proceed south, while a crew van from Etowah came to pick up K444's crew since they were about to law out. Upon arriving at Coniston, Q541 picked up G378's power & crew to take them back to Pilgrims Pride. After Q541 dropped them off & cleared Bolivar (south of Fairmount), K850 finally proceeded north, picked G378's crew up at Ranger, & took them back to Fairy. The crew of G378 took over K850 to take it north to Etowah after dropping K850's original crew off to take over K444 at Fairy. K444 then left the U735's coal train in the siding at Fairy & proceeded south engine lite to Coniston to pick up the Ethanol train. After getting the ethanol train, they had to wait at Coniston for C710, the Appalachia Regional Port job, to get ahead of them before they could proceed north. This occurred after dark, but thanks to my good friend Travis, he allowed me borrow his speedlites to capture my first night click, which I think I got a pretty good first train to do it with. Once C710 arrived at the port, K444 picked up U735's cut again, which a course became a problem because the coal train was now struggling to build air. Eventually, they were able to get just enough air built to be able to move it, with orders to leave the coal train in Etowah upon arrival there & having a crew van follow them in case the brakes shot, forcing the crew to tie it down wherever it might happen since they were close to lawing out. I could only imagine how much management down in Jacksonville was looking forward to giving this train back to CN in Chicago after the nightmarish 3 days to get it to move only about 140 miles from it's origin just to get to another state.
