robert.admin – Page 10 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

August 3, 2025

Enemy Mine (Review)

friend ranted about this story-set so much he did the ultimate – he ordered a copy of The Enemy Papers, a collection of Barry B. Longyear’s scifi works. Inside is a loose trilogy of Earth (and really, the US) fighting the evil reptilian Dracs. Enemy Mine is the first of the set, and I’ll say this: my friend was right. Okay, a note on the title. “Enemy Mine” does not refer to (as I thought) either an explosive anti-ship bump-n-bang weapon nor a mineral shaft. No, it means “My enemy” in a sort of archaic wording. And well that it should. So […]

August 3, 2025

OpsLog – TBL – 8/2/2025

nlike the last ops session I was at (which was, to no fault of the host, like a fight with cavalry lances in a shit house at midnight), the more compact, less attended session on the diminutive Tuscarora Branch Line was quite a success. I’d been planning on doing a test-run session since May (when we shut down the line to work on the river, almost done yet inexplicably not included in the accompanying photographs). Now that the river is mostly finished and looking somewhat better than plywood, we finally got a chance to use the layout in the way […]

July 31, 2025

Hot Button (DOG EAR)

y dad was an only child with older parents, and I think that might have caused his anger issues. Limited social interactions, you know? So, to me, my dad was a gruff Navy captain. We got along well enough – we both loved trains. But no, you didn’t want to get him angry. He’d go volcanic. So that’s my excuse (which really isn’t an excuse) – learned behavior. My anger has cost me three jobs in the past. Someone in authority would order up a big plate of stupid. We’d argue. I’d lose my temper. And there’s the door. As […]

July 28, 2025

OpsLog – WAZU – 7/27/2025

ne of the rockier sessions on the WAZU, still mostly on time but with rage and thunder to get us there. I still had fun, as did most of the other operators. Andy always puts on a good show and great lunch – I eat better than at home. I had the dispatcher’s seat (third time in a week) and the session started out well. Trains were rolling on their times and making their stops. Andy’s new system of posted turnout IDs made it easy to get the remote trains across the line (still, I was only diverging them when […]

July 28, 2025

OpsLog – FEC – 7/26/2025

ne of my favorite runs – the Florida East Coast. And funny anecdote – I’d been dispatching so much recently (twice this week already) that when I wrote Ken and asked if maybe I could just run trains this time, he quickly agreed, making me double-think it. Was I not that good? Did I do something wrong last time? Why doesn’t he beg me to run the panel? Turns out he wanted to run a more intimate session (not with candles and romantic music and a valentine chocolate box, no, but with only five engineers in the room. He’d generated […]

July 27, 2025

Hammer’s Slammers (Review)

his is one of the classics from the year I left high school, a watermark novel about a futuristic mercenary tank group, their armor no longer obtainable as economies falter (but the need for them growing, for the same reason). So the Slammers move from planet to planet, signing contracts and squishing rebels, militias, and other poorly-armed rabble. The thing is, Drake really did a good job charting out what futuristic combat might turn into (and it’s borne fruit in the half-century since this book’s release). These massive hovertanks are monitored and guided from orbit, swatting down artillery shells with […]

July 24, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O – 7/23/2025

ell, that was satisfying. We got out a solid session last night. Everyone knew what to do to set up. Pre-brief was quick. The clock started and (I’m happy to say) we didn’t get a single LNER (not an English railroad company but a line error on the clock when the system shorts hard). Outside of one helix delay, everything ran fairly smooth. I don’t know about you lugs, but I had a pretty enjoyable time. A couple of real notable events. I didn’t get ANY calls for help to the dispatcher over the radio. Crews really did “work it […]

July 24, 2025

Unicorns and Rainbows (DOG EAR)

mid the rolling green hills with their scattering of humans, the vast giants meet in council. So the setup here is my model train club (Orlando N-Trak, or ONT). We’ve been doing this all my adult life, since 1987. I’ve helped build it, I help run it, I help promote it. And tonight, I had to set up the waybills so engineers know where their freight cars are going. With six mainline freights and seven local trains, we’re moving something like fifty to seventy cars. We need to doublecheck to ensure they all start where they are papered to start, […]

July 20, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O (TT&TO) – 7/20/2025

‘m not sure if everyone is basking in the glow in the aftermath of ops, proud of how they managed to navigate the Byzantine rules of Time Table and Train Order, or still fuming in frustration and resentment. I will admit that it can be difficult, very much so, to do. However, on the plus side, you aren’t just spinning a knob and zipping a train under mother-may-I. And for a club to pull it off, well, that’s nothing short of amazing. We’ve done it various TT&TO formats before:full sets of clearance cards and orders, stapled together. Then the packets […]

July 20, 2025

Solo Kill (Review)

o here’s an interesting concept from 1977, an alien world where flying humanoid reptiles have been preying on fish people. And since these fish people can’t fight for shit, they make a contract with the March People (cats, it appears, what with the fur, sliding claws and quick tempers) to fight their wars for them. So these fish somehow figure out how to build nimble biplanes (I’m thinking Newport 11s) and, quickly, dart-driven machine guns to protect everyone. So that’s the set up; cats in planes dogfighting (catfightng) with spear-throwing bats. Author S. Kye Boult (not his real name) produced […]