robert.admin – Page 15 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

March 2, 2025

Wool (Review)

y friend Pete loaned this book (first of three) to read. I was a bit hesitant – I don’t know Pete’s tastes and if they weren’t mine, well, I’d just signed up for about 570 pages of regret. Needn’t have worried. Wool jumps right in. The last of humanity live in a silo underground, about 150 floors deep with nothing but a circular stairwell to join them. The world outside is toxic and dead, but people still enjoy sitting in front of the big display, watching it. And to keep those camera lenses clean, every so often (when someone cracks […]

February 27, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O – 2/26/2025

f the club has a motto for operations, it’s “Work it out on the ground”. Last night, it was more like “Wring it out of the Clown” with West-Side Dispatcher as the clown. Another “Have a beer when I get home” night at the old clubhouse. So the session started out well enough. We were running an LV Interchange train, a run that we’ll see if we can keep up with it. It’s a bit time-challenged but yes, it might work. But I’d talked things out with the locals (Mingo and Zanesville) and made a pinky promise with 927 (ZV) […]

February 27, 2025

Carbon-dating (DOG EAR)

ccording the media targeting senior citizens, I should have all my hair, be thin, and going off to play tennis (all day?) with my elf-princes wife. Sure, sure. As it is, I’ve got many life-injuries that ache a little more each day. And I’m missing my prostate, so I’m dealing with pelvic floor muscle exercises at every stop light. Getting up and bending under things gets harder and harder. Yes, it sucks. Getting older ain’t for sissies, right? While the physical is bad, the mental is worse. I’ve been dispatching our model railroad club (controlling trains) for over twenty years […]

February 24, 2025

OpsLog – WAZU – 2/23/2025

o what to say? Andy did his best to set up a better session, an improved session. His remote cameras are clearer than before, that horizontal interference gone. And his radios – big change there. With the ear pieces (not buds), you can now comfortably follow the conversation on the line. Where once it was a scratchy, crackling hell (with some family jamming us with their domestic trivialities) we now actually had comfortable, solid communications. While there was still a little stepping-on action, it wasn’t too bad. It was more like watching a railroad video with the dispatcher soundtrack added. […]

February 24, 2025

A Yank in Bomber Command (Review)

his one came to me as a birthday present from my dear wife. Normally she doesn’t try this sort of things – given the number of books I’ve read (I’ve reviewed hundreds on this website), she doesn’t risk it. But this one stood out for obvious reasons. It is the historic recount of an American who started out as an ambulance driver in France and ended up enlisting in the Royal Air Force. Hailing from far-away, different-world Kansas City, the fellow had to start the lengthy process of becoming a Lancaster Bomber pilot in command, involving months of effort. And […]

February 16, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O TT&TO – 2/15/2025

‘ve always said that not many model train clubs (especially temperamental-equipment N-scale clubs) do what we do. We pack more trains into a session than anyone. Last night, on our Saturday Night Special, we really went all out on a Time Table & Train Order session, where men are men and the dead are pulped. Our timetable has eight scheduled trains. Given the wide range of times and outcomes for locals, we have to run them all as extras. And under TT&TO, extras generate paperwork. The time we ran with just scheduled trains last year, I think I wrote John […]

February 16, 2025

OpsLog – Tusk Coast – 2/14/2025

t was a quiet night at the club, one of our Friday Night “Just Run Trains” events. I usually go to them to be the troubleshooter/babysitter (you gotta have a senior member present, if only to unlock the gates and door, and to plunger the toilet, right?). Since Zeus was up from Miami and not much was going on, we tugged Tuscarora out, quickly set it up and ran a fast session, just tower and local. Zeus took first shift running while I did leverman. There wasn’t much to say about it, which (like an airplane flight) is really how […]

February 16, 2025

Fatherland (Review)

o it’s Berlin, 1964. Not our Berlin, but a Berlin where Germany won World War Two. It’s not one of those “Germans Rule the Planet” deals – in this case, they own most of the east (but are still fighting red terrorists along a Vietnam-like front). All other European countries bow to them. And Hitler, now an old man, is about to have a massive birthday party. President Kennedy will soon be flying in to talk detente. Way below all this is a policeman, Xavier March, divorced, hated by his young son (for party reasons), an ex-uboat man, just doing […]

February 9, 2025

ShowLog – Jacksonville – 2/8/2025

hen I was in college, there was a board game about a Soviet sea invasion called Jacksonville: The beaches of DOOM. I never played it but I think I lived it on Friday. So the rubber hit the road – and blew. Three separate road incidents. Our trailer was low on Thursday when Jeff picked it up. Even through he refilled it, it was dead flat Friday morning, making him and his wife run over to a tire shop to get it replaced. Meanwhile, Greg hit something on 95 resulting in a catastrophic failure (tire, tube and rim) delaying him […]

February 9, 2025

Panzer (Review)

o we all have our images of Germany’s original push, the blitzkrieg, with well-run German tanks superior in technology and tactics to every nation they faced. Right? Well, as Matthew Cooper and James Lucas lay out in this 1976 book, no, not quite. The two authors make a pretty good case, showing how the successful (yet too little, too late) infiltration tactics of World War One led to the ideal of total mechanized warfare. You punch through a weak point. You drive hard, cutting communications and command, and rout the enemy. It’s how cavalry used to be used. And the […]