robert.admin – Page 13 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

January 26, 2025

Not Taco Bell Material (Review)

don’t know who Adam Carolla is. A friend said he runs a very popular podcast and was a personality as one of those sorts of “zoo crew” guys on various radio shows. He’s quite successful. Found his book on the shelf of a Norfolk used bookstore (where I get lots of books). Anyway, I looked it over and through “why not?” Okay, I did. I didn’t enjoy it very much. I’m sure that Mr. Corolla wouldn’t like me very much either. We are different sorts of people. So Not Taco Bell Material is a memoir of Carolla’s childhood, pretty a […]

January 26, 2025

Butterfly (DOG EAR)

o this brother-sister pair we know used to hang around with us a lot. They worked in my corporation and they always liked the experience of food. But not, it seemed, the experience of friendship. We’d agree to eat in some new, trendy place and agree on a time. Knowing that these places had just opened and other foodies were flocking there, the wife and I would get there about thirty minutes early, doing the line-standing and wedging into a table. And then we’d wait. And wait. Inevitably they would be late. Thirty minutes Sixty minutes. Oh, we’d get a […]

January 23, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O – 1/22/2025

o I was lucky to make it at all to the session tonight. After attending to “family issues” (the same way the Titanic’s sinking was noted as “shipping concerns”) I got there windblown and frozen with a half-hour to spare. I’d signed up for ore loads east and ore loads east it was going to be. On the dispatcher desks were Phil and Pete, Phil for a return visit to bedlam and Pete as a newbie DS. Okay, since I didn’t have time to think this out, giving Phil a five minute clinic on how my dispatcher panel works was […]

January 19, 2025

Civilizations (Review)

‘ll admit to not having a solid grasp of European history from the time before, during and after the voyage of Columbus. There was a lot going on in history including the various wars, Spain’s growing domination, the pressure from the Barbary raiders and the eastern frontiers, even Martin Luther hammering his demands to his door. Let’s face it, there is so much history and it is difficult to review (and remember) it all. But I’ll admit to liking Laurent Binet’s Civilizations. Actually, this one always followed a line of pondering of mine – what if the sweeping infestations of […]

January 17, 2025

Too damn busy (DOG EAR)

veryone hears those stories of the businessman who retires and is dead in six months. I know an ex-cop who got a blood clot because he sat around all day watching TV. I don’t have these problems. It really clogged up last week. I’m a good dispatcher in model railroad ops sessions. I’m actually requested most times. So when two good friends of mine, Tom and John, both had sessions on last week’s Thursday (tied into a train convention) I ended up spending the entire day dispatching two layouts, back to back. It was 12 hours of doing what I […]

January 13, 2025

ShowLog – 1-(11,12)-2025 – Deland

f you want to know what it feels like to be a astronaut flying away from Earth, into deep space, try getting to the Deland Fairgrounds at 5:30 AM. I just sat in my car and sighed, thinking my lofty thoughts. One thought – I sure overestimated my travel time. Another thought – I wish I’d brought a book. We got good attendance for setup, other than the Polish Precision Rifle Drill Team performance. You see, it’s quite simple. Two people hold the layout in place. Four people, christened One, Two, Three and Four each take a called-out leg type […]

January 13, 2025

OpsLog – P&VW – 1/9/2025

hat a difference forty-five minutes of traffic, a bunch of socializing and a big spaghetti dinner makes. We’d finished the Virginia Southwestern in the late afternoon. It had been a long day. And we made it even longer with a second operations go-round, this time on Tom Wilson’s wonderful Pittsburgh & West Virginia. We all told train stories and then while Tom went over train things in the layout room, I retired to some little granddaughter’s cute pink bedroom (some dispatcher’s office that was. There wasn’t even a spittoon) to do my thing. I could hear Tom’s wife chatting with […]

January 13, 2025

OpsLog – VSW – 1/9/2025

usy weekend for me. The Protorails convention is going on but I cannot attend since I’ll be managing a two day display setup of our sectional layout in Deland. But as part of the convention, they sold spots on both the Virginia Southwestern and the Pittburgh & West Virginia. I ended up to getting invited to a double dose of dispatching, running the railroads from back rooms, sight unseen – ignore the man behind the curtain. And first up; John Wilkes’ VSW. I gotta say that I love this railroad (or rather, two railroads, the L&N (the busy stressful line) […]

January 3, 2025

OpsLog – TC – 1/1/2025

o I’m standing under a post-midnight sky, brilliant with summer stars. Crickets are chirping. Bats flutter past. You might imagine I can smell dew-laden grass but no, my nose is numb from sulfuric diesel fumes, radiating from the fuel distributor Atlantic Coast Line uses to refuel engines out here in the ass end of nowhere. I’m pumping gallon after gallon into my Dash-9. Yes, the prior engineer was trying to look goody-goody to railroad management, running the Tidewater late to up his tonnage. He brought the unit in after midnight, on fumes, like a teenager with his dad’s car. I […]

January 1, 2025

OpsLog – TBL – 12/30/2024

y final blog post for the year, and a model train operations one. We just squeaked this in, last minute. Club president Shannon asked for a quiet little puzzler (he came to a six-person session in September and got smoked). So we slipped over to the club in the waning days of the year for a quiet little to-do. Since Shannon is building a lengthened version of this, he wants to see how the town of Tuscarora does business. When his layout is up, it’s going to put mine to shame. Anyway, running more like Greg and I did in […]