Rick McClellan, in the red shirt, prepares his work while Mark Davidson keeps a steady hand on the throttle. Ernie the cat can be seen supervising the moves at right.
Crews like to eat, so I keep some snacks available along with drinks.
Mark and Rick are in the Patch, specifically the Seventh Street alley, doing the pulls to make room for the subsequent spots.
Rick looks over the cut of cars in the alley to verify he has them lined up in the right order to spot. Santa Fe crews actually lined up their cars for the Patch in the RIP (repair-in-place) tracks in First Street Yard before heading over to the Patch.
Rick reaches across with a uncoupling “pick” (a small bamboo skewer) to separate cars at the Santa Fe freight house in First Street Yard.
Second Patch Session 03/31/09
For this session, I invited “the Frisco Twins,” Mark Davidson and Rick McClellan. They received the same slideshow orientation and short film that I gave Chuck and Mac two weeks before.
Mark was the engineer and Rick the conductor. While they accomplished the job in the same overall time, about two hours, they went about the job somewhat differently. I expected that and it was interesting to watch.
I apologize if the pictures here are a bit “soft” in focus.
