robert.admin – Page 17 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

July 2, 2023

OpsLog – TBL – 7/1/2023

t’s a lazy afternoon in Easton Depot. I’m fanning myself with a timetable, pushing away the humid heat that hangs over Western Pennsylvania. Distantly, a dispatcher who sounds a lot like me tells me that a coal extra is inbound, heading west to Tuscarora and the mines beyond. No orders. Nodding, I kick at the desk-mounted train order lever with my foot, setting the signal to green. Of course he’ll stop anyway, regardless if the signal was green, red or purple. There’s the westbound Easton Turn just airing up at Tuscarora, number 612 on the timetable. So I figure the […]

June 30, 2023

On Sheet – Size and Documentation

o I’m just going out on a ledge here and noting an observation -the smaller your railroad, the more important introductions documentation is. At our club layout, it’s pretty basic. Yard switching information is hung on clipboards near the arrival tracks. Warrants are damn near self-explanatory. Guests who run with us usually need a conductor the first run or two, and then they have it. But if you are running a small layout (and mine is really, really small), you need more documentation to explain what has to happen. In large layouts, there are more sidings and room to sort […]

June 29, 2023

Bragging Rights (DOG EAR)

‘ve recently begun to notice how much I hate braggarts .Look, I didn’t ask and didn’t care, but some people feel the need to tell you how good they’ve got it (which implies how bad I’ve got it). All of these I’ve recently endured… Tech – Yes, nothing is more idiotic than someone bragging about their Tech, be it a car, a computer, a phone, a bike. You didn’t build it so all you are doing is taking credit for clever teams of designers and assemblers. You? You did nothing. For my own life, my model railroad interlocking tower is […]

June 29, 2023

OpsLog – LM&O – 6/29/2023

helfton Turn raddled into Martin Yard, having done its work in respectful time. Its engineer called yardmaster Perry White, asking where he could drop these outbounds and grab the Zanesville Turn. White, old beyond his years but oddly lacking seniority, directed the drop and grab move. He mused at the rapidity with which the engineer swapped out and accelerated out of the yard. It was like he was some sort of Superman. This engineer was not of this railroad or even of this Earth. The sole surviving member of a planet destroyed when its DC modules exploded, and who described […]

June 25, 2023

OpsLog – FEC – 6/24/2023

moment of kick-ass history. The Luftwaffe was bombing the crap out of London. Things were getting tight for Hitler’s invasion schedule – they must break the Royal Air Force. On September 15th, 1940, the Germans threw everything they had into a full assault on the English Capital. From the bunkers below, Winston Churchill turned to Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park and asked about their active reserves. Park replied, simply, “There are none”. And that was the epic day on the FEC. I started working with my lovely yardlets to move trains, myself on Trim, JB as yardmaster and Bev […]

June 23, 2023

On Sheet – Extra Board

t all started with a yawn. A fella was running coal on my Tuscarora a year back. To make interference for the local, the computer would come up with a random list of coal runs to make (such as make three loaded laps one way, two empties the other, run the engine light to the far end, run three more laps…). When I asked if he was okay, he told me he was bored. Everyone else on the railroad was working hard and pondering how to do their jobs. He was just chauffeuring coal. To fix this, I had a […]

June 22, 2023

Watership Half-down (DOG EAR)

orgot all about this – I’m sure I could find the original post if I looked. The original story was that I had brought a book in with me to the urologist. They needed some in-house xrays to see what those pesky stones riding in my kidneys were up to. The woman working the machine saw my book and we started talking books. She said she was trying to find a book she could share with her daughter. Took me about half a second. “Watership Down.” Told her a little about it. Bunnies. Nature, red of tooth and claw. All […]

June 20, 2023

OpsLog – CSX Taft – 6/19/2023

‘m suffering survivors’ guilt right now. See, we ran on Chris Strecker’s CSX Taft railroad, a small two man pike with two jobs – the guy running the freights and the other running the local switcher (stationed at Orlando’s Taft Yard). The crews work their jobs for the first half-day (twelve slow laps of the freight, with drop-work done enroute). And the local, he preps up outbound cars and spots in dropped inbounds. Then you swap jobs. In theory, under the law of averages, in game-science, the crews should face the same amount of effort. Should. That’s the operative word. […]

June 18, 2023

Destroyermen 2: Crusade (Review)

ell, things ended well in the first book for Lieutenant Commander Matt Reddy. Aboard the four-stacker destroyer Walker, he and his crew found themselves in an alternative timeline in the Western Pacific. Here, apparently the asteroid had not wiped out the dinosaurs, velociraptors had evolved, as had the man-sized lemurs from Madagascar. So Reddy has allied with the fuzzes to fight the scalies. And given that he has a couple of 4″ guns with modern munitions, those lizard sailing ships don’t stand a chance. However, in attempting to break a siege in what is modern day Surabaya, Java, he discovers […]

June 18, 2023

OpsLog – Tusk Hill – 6/17/2023

ilson P. Sloan tossed a leg over a knee and settled in his seat, snapping open his newspaper as his train pulled into the Tusk Hill station. Having completed his effort to meet with solicitors of a Westly-based firm, he’d managed to catch the last Up Train to London. Now his luck appeared to have run its course. What was supposed to be a three-minute station stop was dragging on. Outside, one of the last midland steam engines in existence puffed past, dragging a goods wagon. Railroad business. Sloan couldn’t be bothered. He focused on the business section of his […]