robert.admin – Page 199 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

November 15, 2011

Nanny State

I’ve mentioned elsewhere I’m a bit of a socialist. I don’t like the idea of fighting my way through the work day, not for promotions, riches and success, but merely to avoid living under a bridge. A women on the other side of the fence from me (politically, not locationally) goes on and on about the “Nanny State”, and how government should not tell people what to do. Well, from my own life-perspective, I’d agree to junking the benefits of civics if only I didn’t see the following… People who refuse to use turn signals or turn on their lights […]

November 13, 2011

Writer’s block

After six weeks of horsing around with the book assembler I’d hired off eLance, we broke off our professional relationship. She ends up with $500. I end up with a bunch of files that are mostly useless. I’m reworking the kindle version now myself – nuts to her. Its like that line out of War of the Worlds, where the narrator sees how little the artilleryman has achieved in his actual plan of digging an underground stronghold for the remnants of man: “…and when I saw the work he had spent a week upon – it was a burrow scarcely […]

November 13, 2011

OpsLog – Nebraska Division – 11/13/2011

Hosting an ops session is a good example of Murphy’s law. I showed up at Docs a little early to set up the dispatcher’s office, eager to see his newest effort – a train-cam which an engineer would use to run the train from a cab-level-view from the dispatcher’s office. It’s been a subject of model railroad conjecture for years now. So it’s run for two weeks – Doc’s even got a video of an earlier test run. And now it’s showtime and the camera fails. Nothing. I can see he’s disappointed and I feel for him. I can remember […]

November 7, 2011

OpsLog – Tehachapi – 11/6/2011

Here’s a word problem for you: Our black-widow lashup of Southern Pacific F-3 diesels idles in the afternoon sun at Bena in 1952 at the head of a seventy-car string. We are the fifth (and final) section of train 804 (meaning there are four sections ahead of us, the fourth section 10 minutes down the line). It is now 1:40PM. As head-end engineer, I’ve gone back to meet with my two helper engineers (midtrain and rear) to discuss our next move. Positionally, we are located as follows: Kern Jct (Bakersfield) – 10 minutes behind us Bena (where we are at) […]

November 6, 2011

OpsLog – Tehachapi – 11/5/2011

“Take over,” the Caliente operator asked me. “I need to get lunch.” I’d been hanging over the operator’s shoulder for the last hour, watching how he worked the board, wrote train orders, dictated them back. Essentially, he’s the contact between the remote dispatcher and the train crews, setting his station signals, passing orders up, OSing train times. And he needed lunch. So I took the seat, slipped on the head phones, eased closer to the mike. There should be a foot pedal to activate the mike- CLICK Over the earpiece: “This is dispatcher.” Shit. Ummmm…. “Caliente. Radio check.” “Got it Caliente.” Okay, […]

November 5, 2011

Out of the closet

It’s an empty office. Mid-level guys like me can’t use it. There aren’t any managers who want it. Its windows are dirty and it’s filled with old filing drawers, a bent shelf and a dead mini-fridge. Paperclips and push-pins litter the floor. Now, I used to keep my bike in my pod area, back in the early days when I was alone here. Just leaned it nearby while I worked. Then civilization came. The pods filled. It became noisy, crowded. Crime increased. My bike parking spot went to a contractor. So I rolled the bike into the office and leaned it against […]

November 2, 2011

Trotsky

Had a Halloween party at work the other day. Was told to come up with something scary. So I took a “LIBERAL” shirt. Added a beret with a Mao pin on it. And a sign for “Occupy Maitland Summit” (our building) And a “Quotations of Chairman Mao” little red book (to wave) And let my beard grow ragged. And what does this give you? The scariest thing most people can imagine – a liberal socialist! SCREEAMMM! Actually, when we were told to get up and tell everyone who we were and what our costume was, I said, “I’m Robert, and […]

November 2, 2011

Off to Tehachapi

I’ll be flying to San Diego to operate on La Mesa’s massive Tehachapi railroad layout this weekend with five club-members. How massive are we talking? It’s 25 scale miles long. A mile is 60’ 8”, so that’s 1516 feet long. If you ran a train 60 mph along it, it would take 25 minutes to get from Mojave to Bakersfield. As track speed is about 25 mph, it will take a first class train an hour to complete a run. One time it took me six hours to move a set of cab-forward helpers (running as extras) down the hill […]

October 30, 2011

Beholder

The world is full of ugly things. Ugly buildings. Ugly people. Ugly streets. Ugly cars. But if you look close, sometimes you can see beauty. I think the most beautiful thing on a bike is the chain system that works the rear-hub gearing. As intricate and unlikely as a wasp’s wing or the human knee, it clicks and clatters through the ride. In the morning, it’s the first sound I make on the street, the crisp chick-chick of the gearing as my speed climbs and I go into that first curve. Like a formula one race driver, I have most […]

October 29, 2011

The Future

Saw the future today. Wow! Was over at my buddy Steve’s house today, doing a little work on the traveling layout and then getting another test run in on the SP&K. It’s a cool two-deck layout with a lower staging area, a twin helix (up and down) and then and over and back run – basically a great big dogbone (with a section of single track). But the thing is, he’s automated it. We’d run an early practice session a while back (HERE) and found a number of problems with how things worked, all which Steve addressed. For example, instead […]