robert.admin – Page 117 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

May 19, 2018

OpsLog – FEC – 5/19/2018

kay, so when that general freight rumbled north into Bowden Yard in Jacksonville and I missed setting the primary turnout correctly, it rolled up the departure track and slammed into a freight sitting in position for departure. Of course, it’s the perfect storm because the engineers are in the other shed, running blind on repeater signals. So crumbled diesels, even more crumpled crews, ruptured gas tanks, explosions, six o’clock news. As a dispatcher, I’d have been out of that seat before the shockwave rolled overhead. The NTSB would have had me in a chair, isolated, grilling me about that total […]

May 16, 2018

Attention to Detail (DOG EAR)

’m on the train, my nonplussed reflection reflects back at me against a leaden sky. I’ve got my leg (the cuff still soaked from recent bus-train dash) tossed over my folded Brompton bike. As the backwall landscape rolls by, I’m paying special attention to the weedy gravel-bordered rain puddles. Why? Successful writing means you (the author) pays attention to the little details of life. You can describe a guy going out to his car for his morning commute, but if he picks his keys out of a tray (showing he’s got a living routine he follows) you flesh him out […]

May 13, 2018

Martin Citywit (Review)

his one comes (like a couple of my other reviews) from the fantastic final anthology produced by Jurassic London, the little press that I nearly got published through a few times (and had a nice relationship with). So, yes, you’ll have to go online for this limited release or look about or maybe borrow my hardcover. If you are careful). So this one’s scifi – but don’t stop here; it’s delightful! It is told sorta as a narration in Dicken’s fashion, the tale of self-aware computers who run the most sensible blocks of data (self-contained, so as to limit the […]

May 9, 2018

Grasshopper (DOG EAR)

n interesting test for a writer. Today (after my enjoyable bike/train/bus commute and some sit-on-my-can meetings) I slipped quietly out of work and drifted over to a fast food place. Early lunch, it isn’t too noisy and they keep the muzak to a minimum. I sat down and ate lunch while reading my prior efforts on my tinytop, then easily slid back into the story line. This was enjoyable. It’s the way writing should be. Even in a noisy plastic environment I sipped my coke and wrote. I was like a shopper in a market, picking out the words and […]

May 6, 2018

Luftwaffe Fighter Aces (Review)

kay, so I went into supercharger and climbed out of my usual cloud of fantasy/scifi to read a history book, one about the German Air Force (and, specifically, those who flew for it) in World War Two. First take-away – I am amazed at how high the German aces scores are. And this isn’t bombastic German inflation – these scores are largely confirmed by military historians over the years. I’m used to Richtofen’s highwater mark of 80, but here we have Hartmann with 352 (the top dog), Barkhorn with 301, Rall with 275, through 15 pages of listings (most of […]

May 3, 2018

Stories (DOG EAR)

love stories. Stories determine our past, present and future. The world is a web of stories. So there I am on a sleepy suburban rail platform (story) with my Brompton folding bike (ongoing story) with my NYC subway map t-shirt (old story). To this story, let’s add the Sunrail ambassador and make a new story. She’s the lady who helps you to buy your tickets and not tumble onto the tracks (explanative story). And she’s crazy and vibrant and more animated than a Disney flick (background story). So she comes over and points to a spot on my chest-map, up […]

April 29, 2018

A Boy and his Tank (Review)

o New Kashubia is a real shithole – it’s pretty much been stripped down to nothing but a ball of melted metal when its sun went supernova a long time ago. And now its home to Bosnian refugees (Earth is now a gated community and all other races and people have been shipped off). These folks now live in slow-starvation squalor in deep tunnels, while even deeper in the bowels of their planet automated factories produce top-line battle tanks. Essentially they are fighting/teaching machines, fully loaded with AI and VR, very destructive and able to house their human tanker for […]

April 28, 2018

OpsLog – FEC – 4/28/2018

o let’s just say, hypothetically, you were standing trackside in Titusville in the 70s (when it was still a sleepy little southern town). It’s about 3pm on a perfect Florida afternoon. Some blue units with 930 mounted on the number boards have been in town for a while. You might have checked references (mimeographed off a typewritten sheet by the Florida East Coast Railroad Fan Club (if such an organization existed)) to see that this was the Titusville Turn. Oddly, it listed its duties as light switching in the small offline yard but here it was with a long string, […]

April 26, 2018

Mr Congeniality (DOG EAR)

pparently I have a problem. It seems I’m a crank. I guess I’ve known it. I’ve had a pretty good life so far but like every life it’s had disappointments. I got screwed out of benefits by a company who owed me so much and curbed me like garbage. And my rocket ascent to historical writer reentered prematurely when my publisher died in a car wreck. There were also three or four women I knew to be perfect wives for me who did not share that assessment (“I still look for them in crowds,” as a favorite movie puts it). […]

April 25, 2018

OpsLog – LM&O – 4/25/2018

here are some sessions where at the end the musicians in the orchestra pit should break out into a stirring refrain and the operators should all come forward in their black club shirts and bow, center stage, to our audience. Tonight was one of those nights. We ran the schedule – the whole thing. Every freight, every passenger, every coal drag. We also ran a bunch of extras, possibly a half-dozen or more. Funny thing was, other than a parade of four trains over Harris Glen, the summit just wasn’t a problem for us – it was the water-level tracks […]