robert.admin – Page 139 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

October 6, 2016

Weave (DOG EAR)

f you live a life that is open and full, you can start to see the weave. Stories and events, all wrapping together. Recently an young Indian lady who shares a pod with me was chatting about a function she was at (actually, the story had more to do about parallel parking that the function). But she mentioned the Bhagavad Gita which I admitted to have read (another nice Indian lady on my team picked up a copy on a trip to her homeland years back – it has a chariot in it. I ended up reading the whole epic […]

October 6, 2016

OpsLog – B&B – 10/2/2016

f there is a grand finale for the weekend, it would be the Brandywine & Benedictine, a beautifully massive railroad that sprawls all over. Sadly, progress has overcome this fine line – it is no longer Time Table & Train Order controlled, and now runs on CTC. Traffic lights aside, it’s still a delight to operate with two dozen engineers to make this all work. And my part in this drama begins at 2:30pm, rolling downslope from Sulphur Springs to the town of Allegany at the controls of a massive articulated steam engine, a long string of black coal hoppers […]

October 5, 2016

OpsLog – PCD – 10/1/2016

t’s a long run from Trinidad to Denver, mostly double-track main, one for passenger, one for freight. All down its length, industrial centers, mines and cities sprawl along the desert route. And unlike the SPR, this time I wasn’t bashful. I gave everyone a quarter second to opt for dispatcher and then my hand shot up. “I’ll do it”. The pace of this railroad is pretty easy, and if you look ahead you can pretty much route them from track to track to keep everything moving. Of course, I’m always surprised by how many operators don’t call in control points […]

October 4, 2016

OpsLog – CNW – 10/1/2016

new position for me. Ran on the basement-packing Chicago & NorthWestern, miles of main line with industry all the way, all fed from the massive Proviso Yard. Zoom in on that yard. Dozens of tracks. Zoom closer. At one side, engine facilities and fueling decks. Zoom even closer. See him? The guy who runs engines out from the shops and puts them on the ready track? And who plucks them off the arrivals, inspects them, services them, and refuels them? Yeah, that’s me. Low-class dirty in my suspenders and grubby ball cap. And that’s what I did – moved engines […]

October 3, 2016

OpsLog – SPR – 9/30/2016

dispatch a lot. And usually I have no problem taking this position. So when we were all loitering in our briefing for the Southwestern Pennsylvania Railroad and the super called for the DS, I was standing there doing my “Ah, shucks, sure, I can do it” modest number when someone snatched it right out from under me. Blink blink. Wait. What just happened? It ended up biting me in the ass, too. I was a heavy coal job straining out of Pittsburgh, entering the main (in hidden staging, controlled by the dispatcher). I called. He cleared me and (supposedly) aligned […]

October 2, 2016

Floor Games (Review)

can only imagine what being H.G. Well’s kid must have been like. Sure, his dad was a bit out there, with Free Love and his divorce and such. Who knows what that would have been like, at the tale end of the oh-so-proper Victorian Age. But then again, it must have been fun, too. I mean, wow, your dad was writing about Martians striding about in fighting machines, blasting crowds of people. He wasn’t, say, a chemist. He was an early pioneer of writing. Imagine the bedtime stories. Or the play sessions. This one came out in 1911 (and predated […]

September 29, 2016

Ready Player One (Review)

eady Player One is, in a nutshell, a geeky love-affair with the eighties, the era’s games, its movies and media. And just like some of my girlfreinds from that time, I think I remember them more fondly than they actually deserved (no, not you. If you read this and are mad about it, this isn’t about you ) Like the console games of that time – which were simple and fun – this pretty much discribes this book. So, the setup – Wade is a poor kid (in the future, pretty much everybody is poor) living in stacked trailers in […]

September 29, 2016

Frustrations (DOG EAR)

’ve written these before. Usually I explain what I thought writing would be, and then what it actually is. Generally it’s some mechanical nutbaggery, something that doesn’t bring understanding or joy or excitement to others (and myself). Thursday was posting day for another Dog Ear piece, one about Government Labs. It was just a fun piece, something I whipped out in the moment when I noticed the thoughts I had over that phrase and how worn out it’s becoming. Just a fun little thing. I’d had it prepped a few days early. It should be no problem to get it […]

September 28, 2016

OpsLog – LM&O – 9/28/2016

ou know it’s going to be a bad ops night at the club when you get into the lot and there is one car sitting there, all by itself. You really know it is when that one person tells you that Calypso Yard is dead. No power. No trains can move. Yikes. Calypso is a collective yard on the eastern approaches to our steep mountain district. Cars from several different lines are gathered here, to be tacked onto westbounders boosted through the high pass. And descending trains do the opposite, dropping cuts to be parceled out to other roads. We […]

September 22, 2016

Perfect makes Practice (DOG EAR)

y brother is Mr. Fixit. Everyone goes to him for practical tinkerings. When we got the phone call that my dad was sliding away, we were in his garage replacing the bearings on my bike’s wheel hub. My sister, she’s the international speaker on medical issues. She does all those conferences and speaking tours. And she also shoves probes up people’s wazzos and makes damn good money doing it. When it comes to medical questions, everyone rings her up. Me? Heh. Me. What do I bring to the table? Outside of corporate compliance and a wide span of devoured books, […]