robert.admin – Page 143 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

November 6, 2016

Red Hill (Review)

othing makes the miles go by faster on a road trip than audio books. I only wish I could listen to more of them but my commute is only twenty minutes and most of the times I’m biking anyway. But we had to go to Atlanta for a model railroad function and stopped by the library the night before for a couple of audios. And that’s where we picked up Red Hill. I’d shown the description to the wife – a brief read of the back cover made me believe that some vague disaster had happened to civilization and a […]

November 6, 2016

OpsLog – Tehachapi – 11/5/2016

irst day of the two day full-throttle ops weekend at the La Mesa Club, San Diego. Great layout; 1950’s California railroading under Time Table and Train Order, on a layout 25 scale miles long. It started with bloodshed. So, off to a good start. John, getting ready for his inaugural run aboard Extra 170 out of Boran for Bakersfield and parts west didn’t quite see a step, so down he went five minutes before departure, a sprained hand and a bloody elbow. Now that he’d learned his place beneath a conductor, we could proceed. Well, that was until we found […]

November 3, 2016

DNF (DOG EAR)

or all the stuff people say about the wonderful new dynamic publishing model, with all these books out that never would have seen the light of day, I have to say that some of them should have been buried in deep graves in the woods and forgotten. I won’t say which book this was (but those with sharp eyes might spot it sometime) but some coworker raved on it I bought a $3 book on his recommendation. You know, I’m dropping book titles by Stephenson and Wells and even Pratchett, and this guy pushes a off-brand. But sure, why not […]

October 30, 2016

American Flagg (Review)

OGANG: 7:32 For those who have never read American Flagg, you simply have missed one of the more interesting comics ever produced (listen to me speak like an authority – I gave up on comics when Cerebus started to drag). But still, American Flagg. It was the first comic I’d ever read that captured the idea of media overflow (and this, in the 80s before the internet). Every panel was awash with infographics, trade marks, click throughs and raunchy videos attempting to get you to “stick your card into the slot (bum ba bum) and you’re going to see something […]

October 30, 2016

Borrowed scopes (10/29/2016)

t was like the Pony Express, bolting out of a model train session held under moonlit conditions (as described in part 1 of my day, HERE) in Palm Bay to race back to Orlando, swap cars, pile in binoculars, planispheres and lawn chairs, and then run up to Geneva for the star party there. Unfortunately I got there after dark. This meant we were fumbling our way out onto the driving range pad with no idea where the scopes had set up (every time we go out there, they move for some reason). Worse, we were in the Jetta and […]

October 30, 2016

OpsLog – FEC – 10/29/2016

ight trains. Outside of the interesting imagery that phase produces, it can make for some interesting running potential as well. And even more interesting since my entire day (and all the hobbies that filled it) involved night stuff. See my astronomy blog for the connection. In this case, the Florida East Coast was going to try something new. We ran the first half of the session, 1pm to 6pm, under daylight conditions. I’d agreed to splitting the shift with Ken for this – we’d swap out the DS job half-way through. And we had a good front-end run – a […]

October 27, 2016

Effing (DOG EAR)

‘ve mentioned numerous times how reading really opens your life. Suddenly you can start to see the weave of civilization. In your mind, you can live in the banks of the Mississippi in the 1840s, in New York in the roaring twenties, or even in ancient Tyre before the time of Christ (shameless plug – check out the link below). So today, another factoid entered my head. No doubt you’ve heard the word “effing”. I’ll be you assume that its a recent word, perhaps developed in the last century-turn as a counterbalance against the F-bomb. And why not – the […]

October 26, 2016

OpsLog – LM&O – 10/26/2016

rom: Rufus Biggest, President, LM&O c/o Union Station Hotel, Penthouse Suite, Cincinnati, Ohio To: Board & Division Officers, Harris Division, LM&O Subject: The State of the Railroad Gentlemen; I stood on the drafty platform of Pittsburg Station, watching Bithlo (my private business car) being tacked on the tail of train 66, an eastbound passenger express. Little that I know that the true state of our bridge route would be revealed by this overlong, overdue passage. First, we came nowhere close to meeting out published 11:30am departure time. In fact, the station workers seemed curious about 66 in that it […]

October 23, 2016

Transmetropolitan (Review)

omics. Love ’em. And Transmetropolitan is why I love them. Yeah, some of them are superhero yarns, the same as they were for eighty years. But sometime they push the boundaries forward. Transmetropolitan is one of these. In ways, it reminded me a lot of American Flagg (review to follow next week – yeah, Transmet got me to read all those old back issues). Across ten collected compilations (I was missing #2, but that’s a minor blip), we see a dark story unfold, one that watches a corruptly evil man (yet with a seemingly good heart deep down) make an […]

October 23, 2016

OpsLog – Makers Faire – 10/22-23/2016

eople always talk about the romance of trains, of rails humming and whistles blowing long into the night. Well, that was us at the local Makers Faire, an event held at the Orange Country Fairgrounds. We ran and ran and ran trains. Saturday, 10am to 7pm, Sunday 10am to 5pm. And these are long hours when you spend them slowly walking along your train (like sentry duty in a way), answering questions, watching your signals and gripping the throttle. But we did it. We were placed square in the opening area in the main hall where most people came in, […]