robert.admin – Page 112 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

February 16, 2019

OpsLog – FEC – 2/16/2019

here are three things Dispatchers love in model railroad operations. The first is the chance to dispatch a large and active railroad, which the FEC is. It’s got full CTC, a massive panel that’s great fun, and a lot of traffic up and down the line. So when Ken asks me, “You wanna dispatch?”, yeah, I’ll nod and say “Sure” but inside I’m clicking my heels and throwing my hat in the air. “Sure, I suppose I could.” The second thing a dispatcher loves is when the operations and yard folks run their trains well. In this case, we were […]

February 10, 2019

The Swarm (Review)

’ve got a friend in a hospital sixty miles off whom I visit three times a week. This is an extra 300 miles a week in the car, or five hours going putt-putt-putt. There was a serious concern that, following a long day at work, I might fall asleep at 80mph on the lonely swamp-crossing highway, go into the brush, get eaten by alligators and never be seen again. Listened to music CDs and actually drifted off the road one night. This wasn’t working. Next trip out, I stopped at the local library and fingered through their audio books collection. […]

February 10, 2019

OpsLog – TY&E – 2/10/2019

kay, I can approach this several ways. There’s spending a fun Sunday with friends in an open garage as the rain comes down, just running trains. And there’s the angle where we ran on a layout where everything ran on time, every train passed as per their timetable, that it went off like virtual clockwork. Or there is the telling where I visualize the Sand and Log run down from Tipton to Staffordtown, of running a train constructed with heavy covered gons on front, flats behind, of slipping into Meadville to make my meet to rocking along in that swaying […]

February 7, 2019

Libertarian Grind (DOG EAR)

just started a new SciFi series a friend of mine sent me for Christmas. When I pursued the back cover, I noted all the libertarian praise. Guns and dogs and freedom comments. A fatigue fell over me. I’ve read a couple of libertarian books before and, without exception, they are always the same. A buff, handsome entrepreneur, heavy with bitter backstories and loaded for bear, decides to make a stand against a mass of people so liberally unlikable that it brings tears to your eyes. If you’ve ever enjoyed socialist privilege, even to the point of checking out a library […]

February 3, 2019

Powers of the Earth (Review)

ith apologies to my best friend (a Liberaltarian) who gave me this book, I simply couldn’t finish it. I finish almost every book I start. I make a specific effort to do so. But this one, I could not. Let me go over the idea of the novel first, and then I close with my personal pain point about it. So, Powers of the Earth is a tale of a lunar colony founded by those fleeing the slow system’s failure of Earth. Everything is quite touchy-feelie back at home, with the military forced to accept handicap soldiers, with CEOs put […]

January 30, 2019

Must see (DOG EAR)

ack in my younger years, some forty years past, I would attempt to get people to see favorite movies. I’d loan them my VHS tapes. I’d offer to sit with them in the theater. I’d nag and beg and plead. I’d even bribe. I remember coming home to tell my brother all about the Anime Star Blazers we’d been following religiously in college. Or Run Lola Run. Or just about any great flick or series or episode. And you know what – 99% of the time, nobody would spare the time. Apparently the greatest gift, that of time, was not […]

January 26, 2019

Gyo (Review)

oo boy. Okay, so Gyo means “fish” in Japanese, and not “a dreamlike nightmare that gets worse and worse until you are screaming to awake”. Which was my first guess. Gyo is a manga (a Japanese graphic novel) produced by a macabre-spewing author/artist named Junji Ito. My wife gave it to me for Christmas, a little thing she thought I’d like. So let me put it this way – I found it disturbing. Sickening. Crazy. Bleak. Strange. And just goddamn weird. It was also pretty good (from a horror viewpoint). I’m not going to spoil too much. At the start, […]

January 26, 2019

OpsLog – WBRR – 1/26/2016

t’s been a half year (I figure) since my last run down to Al’s (last time I’d suffered a hernia and didn’t want to sit in a car for four hours). This time, my physicians cleared me for light Station Operator Duties, so I reported to the Delores office (as well as Placerville Jct and Dulcie), grabbed a stool and a radio and managed the railroad from the cinder-roadbed level. I suppose that’s why I like this job – it can make a difference. Sure, a dispatcher and a yardmaster can make a railroad run smoothly (and everyone wants those […]

January 24, 2019

Cold Feet (DOG EAR)

nteresting thing happened the other night. I’ve invited my fireball niece (who has done everything from traveling across Ireland with us to riding a critical mass on a Blompton) to do a guest review. She’s settling into her world o’ work and has a little more time, now that her school/party days are sadly fading behind her. Since she’s reading more, I hoped to get some of her book reviews up (less work for me, right?). She agreed. So, the night in question, she IMed me to tell me she was going to write a review. I thought about it […]

January 24, 2019

OpsLog – LM&O – 01/23/2019

o one can blame me – after Bruce had a critical medical attack in my car on the way to a train session, well, I really wasn’t in the mood for operations at the club. But I thought about it and knew that he’d kick my ass if I cancelled a session because of him. So I sent out a reminder and showed up. I can’t say why but as I walked in I suddenly knew what I wanted to run – the helper set he always worked up the Harris Glen westbound ascent. The engines were right where he […]