robert.admin – Page 20 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

June 21, 2024

On Sheet – Seniority

ne of the problems we faced on our club layout is staffing up trains and running everything. On a home layout, that really isn’t a problem. If you wish to do it this way, you can tie in a firm understand with your operators that – outside of special cases – you stay until the session is over. And you should attend a debrief (the owner has put a great deal of effort into a session and wants to hear, good and bad, how it went). I was at a session last year where some old duffer decided, in mid-session, […]

June 20, 2024

My Training for Blogging, or the other way ’round (DOG EAR)

y model train blogs seem to be popular. Every layout I visit knows I’m going to blog them. There is always a running joke about who is getting blogged this time. And then there are all those “On Sheet” pieces I write for another Facebook group, talking the this and thats of model railroading operations. I just checked tonight – there are 667 blogs (not including this one) on my site about trains. Thank goodness it wasn’t one less or it would set off some of the denominationals out there. But think about that – nearly 700 blogs about what […]

June 17, 2024

OpsLog – WAZU – 6/16/2024

kay, so I head-oned a train today. Yup, I admit it. I was trying to run the lumberjack and got a little distracted. I was trying to meet a train at Cheney, worried about getting out of his way since his engine had a camera taped on the nose and the operator was in the other room, doing a good job of looking like a misguided torpedo as he raced towards the fouling point I was still crossing. My entry was jarring, what with the short detector buzzing at crotch level, and the chorus of “Who’s on a switch!” rising […]

June 16, 2024

A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Review)

nother Norfolk used bookstore find (someone tossed it, to my gain). The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is a tale about a tunnel ship (that makes the warp paths other ships can use. In this universe, a divided human race (after our planet’s collapse there were those who stayed in system, and those who joined a refugee fleet) finds itself as members of the Galactic Commons, a sort of UN in space sort of thing. Rosemary Harper has signed up on Wayfarer to be their ship’s clerk. But she has a history, something she is hiding. But the […]

June 14, 2024

On Sheet – Dis-Faster

he WAZU was our problem home layout. The owner wanted it to be modern high-speed rail service between Seattle and Portland – big trains running fast on open tracks. But whenever we did it, we quickly ended up with snarls on the railroad and the radios making everyone’s ears bleed. Of course, then the crews were having to shout at each other to be heard over the radio noise. Not good. And the owner did not want to install phones. We’ve done simple mother-may-I. Then we tried warrants. Each time we got some combination of booming radios and delayed trains. […]

June 13, 2024

OpsLog – TBL – 6/13/2024

uick blog for a quick session – Greg and I decided to run a fast one to test out the tower on a mid-day Wednesday (ah, the joy of retirement). And that’s why I found myself, with my operator on the drive over, discovering that the tower was not working. It was that fault 16 nonsense again, but other levers in that range would trigger it. Had chief engineer Steve on the line, weeping and crying at him, when it suddenly stopped and ran right as rain. Bullet proof. I can’t explain it. So Greg showed up and we ran […]

June 13, 2024

Embarrassed (DOG EAR)

car crash ended my writing career. I’ve gone over the particulars on this before. I was on the fast track up through my publishing house and then was shut down and dropped back to the writer’s basement of non-representation by an act of fate. Made a few more attempts and then settled down to write for myself. And I’ve used my gift to save a failing newsletter (and gain “street”-cred on that), and then there are my blogs. Writers are occasionally touched by Dog Ear. Readers like my Review. And model railroaders love my OpsLog and On Sheet. So yes, […]

June 11, 2024

Hitler’s War (Review)

nteresting idea here – how would World War Two have changed if Neville Chamberlain had not just given Hitler Czechoslovakia, kicking off the war earlier, say, 1938? It’s interesting in that the Japanese are no-way interested in bombing Pearl Harbor yet. The Germans are slugging their way into France with a lot less then they had in 1940 – only Panzer Is and IIs. More importantly, General Sanjurjo does not die in a plane crash and runs the Spanish Civil War himself, instead of Franco. So there are no quick thrusts – just a slog in Spain, France, Poland and […]

June 9, 2024

OpsLog – WBRR – 6/8/2023

itting in my muggy dispatcher’s office in Denver, the windows open and a fan chattering on the desk, I can only imagine what it’s like in flat, faraway, hellish Navajo in June as the telegraph slowly confesses that 391 has puffed into town an hour the hot side of noon. Easy to imagine the dozen or so passengers stumbling out of their hellishly hot combine, to stagger over the mainline rails to the little cantina while the steamer uncouples off the front end and idles over to the tank to fill its empty boiler. The passengers drink their warm beer […]

June 9, 2024

Destroyermen 10: Straits of Hell (Review)

eah, yeah, another Destroyermen book. I’m over the halfway point now. So our Alternate-World-War (starting when an aging destroyer fell into a primitive world where dinosaurs never went extinct) continues on the allies’ front lines. In the west at the former Grik capitol, the Grik ready a counterattack across the strait between Madagascar and Africa. And over in South America, the Doms prepare to strike the allied base. There is a bit of synergy in the storytelling. In both cases, a massive force looms over the good guys. And as very typical in Taylor Anderson’s story, it seems to always […]