The Lovelock local doesn't always go all the way to Lovelock. Today we have just two cars to deliver and two more to pick up from customers in Battle Mountain. The SP box car is an empty for Premium Choice and the covered hopper is a load of plastic pellets for Diamond Plastics.
This train will be assembled on the siding so the yard switcher has pulled the caboose out and with it has coupled onto the two outgoing cars and will move them to the siding were the road switcher waits.
With the train assembled and an air brake tests done, the local starts rolling to exit the west end of Carlin yard running long hood forward.
Within just a few miles the train has already passed through the Palisade tunnels and crossed the Humboldt River twice. It will cross the river a few more times before reaching Battle Mountain.
While all of the turnouts in Carlin are controlled from the tower, everything is manual at Battle Mountain. Arriving at the east end of the Battle Mountain siding, the head end brakeman dismounts and aligns the turnout for the siding. He will then get back on the locomotive and the rear end brakeman will re-align it for the main once the train has cleared the turnout.
The first move to get out of the way is at Premium Choice. It's a simple exchange of box cars.
The empty SP box car is uncoupled from the caboose then used to pull the loaded Railbox car out from the spur and then it gets coupled onto the caboose. Sometimes this customer wants cars spotted at a specific door. They didn't care this time so the empty is being spotted a door 2.
To be continued in part 2.
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