robert.admin – Page 101 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

December 19, 2019

OpsLog – L&MO – 12/18/2019

ast run of the year, doing it early on the club layout. And man, what a start. Bitch mode on First, we (meaning the club – I didn’t sign up) have a show this weekend. But I got pulled into the load effort which ran two hours late (with would explain the Silver Bullets in ops). So instead of dinner, I gotta beeline to the club to load modules. And when we open the trailer door, there is a big hole cut into the floor (evidently some people started doing repairs, got bored halfway through and wandered off). So it […]

December 18, 2019

Journal Box (DOG EAR)

‘ve written novels which have been represented by agents and published by publishing houses. I’ve self-published. I’ve self-promoted. I’ve given speeches about my subjects in public (shudder!). I’ve flogged in book shows. I’ve even written radio programs. And, of course, I blog (right?). I even proof-read for others. But here’s a new one. Now I’m a magazine editor. The south-east division of the National Model Railroad Association has had (for reasons unclear to me) issues with, well, getting out its issues. Nothing has shipped for a half-year (should be quarterly). This makes the fact that everyone identifies me as a […]

December 16, 2019

OpsLog – FEC – 12/14/2019

eah, this one’s late. But I also had a club Christmas party, then a Journal Box to reedit after a lot of late arrivals came in (next time, posted due-date, gentlemen. You don’t get to argue your time and track rights so don’t piss off the editor). And then there was all that other stuff. So, yeah, Ken Farnham’s FEC ops. It was an abbreviated session for the Orlando N-Trakkers since we had to be in Sanford for the above-mentioned Xmas party by 6pm. But the session was fun. We had a new dispatcher (the guy did great – it’s […]

December 15, 2019

The San Diego and Arizona Railway (Review)

ou might have seen, HERE and HERE and HERE, all about my trip to La Mesa Club in San Diego to run operations circa 1951 on a huge HO scale railroad. While there, I often find myself with an hour or so of downtime before the next train. Often I’ll wander the other layouts of the museum (at night, it’s both quiet and spooky) and look around. Two of them (one HO, one N) have this crazy-high elbow trestle over a Mars-like gorge, with the tracks receding along ledges and pop-tunnels. Quite an amazing scene. It was only on my […]

December 12, 2019

Page Break (DOG EAR)

o the other day I was reading Louis L’Amour’s North to the Rails and my station came up (I was riding the train to the nearest station so I could launch the folding bike at the car shop – it is nice to have a bike that will fit in the boot of a Mini Cooper). Anyway, Longwood Station. Time to get off. And I was just to the part where our hero, Chantry, looks up from his camp to find two enemies sitting on their horses, looming over him. They were going to kill him. Koch would never have […]

December 8, 2019

Paradox Alley (Review)

nd so finally we get to the third (and final) book of the Starrigger trilogy, the Han Solo-ish book about big (really big) rigs, interplanetary gates, and the mystery at the end of the universe, where the road ends. Well, from the cover of the book, you’d think it was going to end violently – the truck going off a cliff (with cars skidding around it) while the driver launches clear with his ejection seat. All very exciting, but it doesn’t happen. Not even close. What does happen is a great deal of not much. Sure, we get to the […]

December 8, 2019

OpsLog – WBRR – 12/07/2019

nother day on the great Western Bay Railroad, chugging about in tiny teakettles amid the high peaks of the Rockies (and now, the smoky canyons of downtown Denver). And those peaks, yeah, I see them out of my station agent window. So the WBRR continues to improve, this session being the best yet. We were running pretty much on the dot. The radios were working well (not perfect, but not bad). I do know a car got dumped without paperwork at Dulce (and then batted about like a football by every working freight after that). But railroads are railroads, and […]

December 5, 2019

Writer Inspiration (DOG EAR)

his from a book about being an American Indian (watch for the review). Words my writer friends might like… Thomas Builds-the-Fire walked through the corridors of the tribal school by himself. Nobody wanted to be anywhere near him because of all those stories. Story after story. Thomas closed his eyes and this story came to him: “We are all given one thing by which our lives are measured, one determination. Mine are the stories which can change or not change the world. It doesn’t matter which as long as I continue to tell the stories. […]

December 1, 2019

Airborn (Review)

o I cracked this one open on a flight to San Diego (see my train blog for details) and found out, as the plane rolled to takeoff speed, that I’d accidently found myself reading Young Adult stuff. And then, fifty miles out and a chapter in, that I was really liking it. Airborn takes place in an alternate Earth, one where hydrium (lighter and better than both helium and hydrogen) exists. And so airships rule the skies. Certain things are the same, but many of the places (especially in America) are different. And in this odd steampunky world (after all, […]

November 28, 2019

Dusty tomes (DOG EAR)

ours and hours… ninja high school (graphic novel ’87) ninja high school 1-10 gd 11-46 fn ninja high school yearbook 1989 1 vg ninja high school yearbook 1990 2 vg ninja high school the prom formula 1 vg I’ve gone through all my comics and categorized them. Found a bookshop that will take them off my hands so I need to send them the list in their format. This includes the condition of the comics in their format. So I cracked open the boxes and got to work… sin city (graphic novel ’92) vf […]