robert.admin – Page 227 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

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 […]

October 26, 2011

Beetle bugs

I love beetles. The first of the three cars I’ve ever owned was a yellow 73 superbeetle I took to the ends of the Earth (well, Irvine California, but I did the transcon in three days). So now I’ve got a 2000 New Beetle (again, yellow with distinctive bug-about-town bee’s knees). And the love, alas, is fading. I understand that a car 11 years old is going to have problems. But there seems to be this airbag issue (due to a harness under the drivers seat). If you get the light, it’s a grand right out of your pocket. I’ve […]

October 26, 2011

OpsLog – LM&O – 10/26/2011

The reason we run trains is to escape reality. Even though we often push weathered cuts of cars into rusty sidings flanked by shabby industrial buildings, even if the era is the great and deep depression, there is an escapism to operations. I hate when reality follows us into our make-believe world. The recession is hitting the club hard. People have been forced into crummy jobs, night work and such. Others are having to extend services of their businesses to stay afloat. And those with 9-5 jobs are so burned out by the stress of keeping them that they often […]

October 23, 2011

The Three Musketeers (Review)

The classic measure to the Musketeer movie is, of course, the 1973 version with Michael York, Oliver Reed, Raquel Welch, etc. That one gets 10 for 10 for following the storyline, great casting, great pacing, and wonderfully choreographed sword-play. Since then, there have been several excretable versions of this classic tale, most of them having nothing to do with the original. The Three Musketeers (2011) is not a bad little version. I wouldn’t want to see it with literate friends but it’s fun enough. Its a rather steampunky affair (the 1973 version had a spring dagger in the hilt of […]

October 22, 2011

Compasion and fairness

Hit the ground the other day, going home. My fault, really. Got myself into a tight spot that I can usually avoid – for this one stretch I usually keep to the sidewalk – the road is narrow and there is a barrier down the right. Anyway, decided to stick to the street and when traffic backed at the light, I cut to the right between the cars and barrier. Then I remembered the the lip between the asphalt’s undersurface and final coat, a half-inch step that I slid down. Humming down this tight space, I realized that the lip […]