robert.admin – Page 153 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

March 26, 2016

OpsLog – FEC – 3/26/2016

ometimes you have ops sessions that make you want to slink away and take up stamp collecting… But…. Sometimes you have ops that you want to lacquer up and hang on the wall, and just lean back in your easy chair and look at them, preferably smoking a big fat cigar. Yeah, today’s run of the FEC was one of those days. Man, did we have fun! I ran the panel and was feeling so comfortable with it, I wasn’t looking at the in-out cheat-sheet, but actually working the yard throat panel logically. We had everything moving including a rail […]

March 24, 2016

Johnny Pulpseed (DOG EAR)

edia comes at us pretty fast these days. Where people in the “old days” (such as the 40s) might have a newspaper, the radio, and billboards, now we have full internet streaming, pop ups, on-demand movies and TV, all through our phones (well, your phones. I don’t do that). It’s understandable that we can get behind. I was that way with my Model Railroader magazines. I had about 6-8 of them sitting beside my bed still in their wrappers. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to read them. No, I did. But I just didn’t have time. Between the stars, […]

March 23, 2016

OpsLog – LM&O – 3/23/2016

e’re going to have to start throwing random events in. It went too well. Oh, I know that there are always derailments and issues. The random car spotting has gotten crazy (Variety Press is getting all their unsold copies of Early ReTyrement back, it seems). But really, from the panel, it was a smooth night. We ran all the drag freights, most of the passengers and three of the four locals. Everyone came in and set up smooth. I fired up the computer and got the back office running. Had some guests show and put them on 202 – poor […]

March 22, 2016

OA-6 (3/22/2016)

lear skies for the last few nights, a full moon with Jupiter in formation. Wanted to check these out with the telescope but just no time. But tonight… Standing out in the back yard, my father’s old wristwatch hanging easy (I can read it by starlight), the big Orion astronomy nocks around my shoulders. OA-6, an Atlas-V on an ISS resupply mission, was launching at 11:04 pm. I’d never gone out and shot a glance at something like this – with clear skies, I’d be able to see just where it was going up from. Got out about twenty minutes […]

March 20, 2016

Gods of War (Review)

‘ve mentioned in a Dog Ear column how I found, then lost, then refound this book. Really, it is a thing of charm I discovered in my recent trip to India, a scifi novel written by the very popular Ashok Banker, an Indian author of impressive credentials. Unfortunately, it’s the first book of a series – which he never completed. And dammit, I really was grooving in it until the end. Maybe, like King’s Dark Tower series, it will find a conclusion. Anyway. Gods of War is a stunning tale. A strange artifact enters Earth’s orbit. Before we can even […]

March 17, 2016

Wet Shoes (DOG EAR)

verybody thinks that writing is about sitting behind a huge desk with a scholarly air, sliding paper into a typewriter and rattling off clever prose. I’ve said this before. And I’ve told you it isn’t. Another story of wretched writing! So we had a model train operation session at the club the other night. I mentioned this on the train blog HERE, but really, it comes down to me to get everything ready, from cleaning track to setting up the dispatcher computer to getting jobs finalized. It was raining so our attendance was down, and we were packed with guests, […]

March 16, 2016

MaintLog – Orlando NTrak – 3/6/2016

asn’t looking forward to this – started getting reports while in India (of all places) that the front porch of the train club was rotting away and needed replacement. Could there be something I’d want to do less that that? Okay, so great thanks are due to Bill Sterner, John Ligda and Bill White who all came out on a Sunday to work this. Our plans were to spend today getting as far as we could with demolition and see what a future rebuild effort would entail. First good luck – a few months ago I happened to find some […]

March 13, 2016

Grunts (Review)

always enjoy a story that takes me to the other side of an issue, where I can see things from a different point of view. In Grunts, Mary Gentle does just that, placing us with a squad of orcs in a fantasy world lifted from Tolkien. Ashnak (the captain) and their brood are hapless underlings. And here’s that POV-switch I’d mentioned; did you ever wonder what it’s like one the other side when the battle breaks for the heroes, when the orc lines collapse, when evil streams in raw panic from the field? So here these guys are up in […]

March 12, 2016

OpsLog – WBRR – 3/12/2016

staple of western drama (overblown western drama, indeed) is that of the misunderstood genius, one who dreams magnificently and throws himself into reaching efforts, only to suffer the destruction of his mad plans. In the end, he is left to croak in the ruins of his endeavors about how “it should have worked, the fools, the fools…!” Yes. Look, I know you can get three trains past on a single siding. I’ve done it in warrants, on CTC boards, and various forms of mother-may-I. It is a stock in trade maneuver on the L&N (where sidings are short and sharp […]

March 10, 2016

Near miss at 40,000 feet! (DOG EAR)

found myself off a quiet little street in noisy big Delhi last week, inside a nookish bookshop. I was looking for a fashion magazine for a friend, not thinking I’d find something for myself. But there on the shelf was a used copy of Gods of War, Indian sci-fi by Ashok Banker. The woman shop owner was letting her daughter (she must have been all of twelve, cute-as-a-button, and giving us bold loud Yankees sidelong glances) work the transaction. She counted my change back very precisely, unlike the stores stateside where they just dump it into your palm, unable to […]