robert.admin – Page 27 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

January 15, 2023

The Dumbest Generation (Review)

here is a bit of irony here. I’d picked up Mark Bauerlein’s bestseller at a neighborhood used bookshop. It had gone into the to-read pile. Then something triggered it to be read, namely a train-club get-together at a local restaurant. There , one of the young members (seventeen years old or so) told me in blunt who-cares fashion, “I don’t read. Haven’t read a single book other than one’s I’ve been made to read. And those I skimmed.” Which depressed me – we talked a little about it, with him questioning the total value of it. And even though he […]

January 13, 2023

On Sheet – Call me!

ou might remember the cookie story from a few OpsLogs ago – about how a crew finished up and went off duty and my entire north end of my railroad was waiting for him to reappear (as the paperwork stated) – it’s right HERE. Yeah, two guys stood in sidings at either end of my missing wack-a-mole, waiting 15 real minutes until he sauntered past with a cookie – munch munch munch. Here’s the deal – in my many years (two decades) of dispatching, if there is one things crews do that drive me nuts – it’s not calling the […]

January 12, 2023

Public Speaking (DOG EAR)

o I got railroaded (har-dee-har-har) into giving a two hour-long clinics at Protorails, a convention of model railroaders who focus on the prototypical. Mine was named TT&TO for Dummies, an introductory course about how trains were dispatched from pre-Civil War until recently (when you don’t have any direct communication or control over the crews). I took a Dale Carnegie at work a couple of years back. It taught me a couple of things: First, you need to prepare, testing out your speech to make sure you have it down flat, that you can pick right back up after an interruption […]

January 10, 2023

OpsLog – P&WV – 1/5/2023

o the second half of Ops Day (which started on the VSW) resumed one hour of driving later, following a large Italian dinner graciously provided by our hosts. And the thing is, after a two hour trip over from their east-coast accommodations, four-five hours of heavy ops on Wilke’s coal line, another hour and a good meal, the crews were a bit loggy. Our ops were not the best. Everyone was just tired. I was tucked in the back room on the dispatcher panel, working through my warrants (I wrote eighty-ninety warrants overall that day across nine hours of ops). […]

January 10, 2023

OpsLog – VSW – 1/5/2023

irst session of the new year, a double header that started at John Wilke’s Virginia & SouthWestern (this was an informal ops session linked indirectly to ProtoRails 2023 in Cocoa Beach). And as usual, I got an invitation to bring my dispatching mojo to the session, to keep things running and entertainment (and speeds) high. And in that, I was mostly successful. So I ran the heavy panel (the L&N) while a visitor named Paul ran the easier Southern Railroad. Fortunately the CTC board (used to control the shared trackage at Edison Jct and Goodbee) was working top-notch this time […]

January 1, 2023

Sign of the Unicorn (Review)

ook Three of the Nine Princes in Amber was a pretty interesting continuation. Corwin, now holding the throne of Amber, tries to figure out where this shadow road leads to that is dumping all sorts of dark creatures into his realm. Another one of his brothers is killed and if it isn’t apparent that we are heading towards a whodunit, it becomes clear when the entire group (brothers and sisters, both) stage a rescue to get another brother back from a shadow-world prison. While they do get him and pull him back into Amber, someone slips a knife into his […]

December 31, 2022

OpsLog – TBL – 12/30/2022

nless someone passes out and a person waves a throttle around and shouts, “Is there a model train operator in the house?”, this was my last session for my busy 2022. We had a quiet Friday afternoon session over at the clubhouse, just a couple of good friends and myself running the Tuscarora. The standing rule was (since there is a bit of a demand for the newly reprogrammed tower) is that after eight hours, engineers can swap out with tower operators. And it worked out well; the coal guy switched out with the tower and positions stabilized for the […]

December 30, 2022

On Sheet- Gilding someone else’s parachute

or the last twenty years of my career, I worked for a transportation company that is colored purple. Yes, those guys. And I really loved it. I was a “meh” of a coder but when I got into management, I shined. I was a great team lead and process guy. We got the team running on all cylinders by the time I retired. I must have done well – I had about a hundred people at my retirement party and it went on all afternoon. One of the things our testing department did (which I couldn’t stand) was the “morning […]

December 29, 2022

OpsLog – LM&O – 12/28/2022

ot my last session of the old year, but damn close. And I’m happy to say I didn’t send out this year with a bang (of trains hitting each other – hard). But it was a rough night, rough enough that when I finally ran the last freight train myself and then ejected the carbon-dioxide club into the cold at 11pm, I went home, had a beer, binge-snacked and watched anime. No more trains for now. We got everything running okay but I made an honest-to-dispatcher mistake early – had a passenger train with orders to meet a local, but […]

December 29, 2022

Best of 2022 (DOG EAR)

t’s time for my site tradition, a review of the best five books from 2022. Of course, these aren’t when they were published but that I read them this year. Now, to be truthful, there wasn’t a lot that I remember that knocked my hat off this year. However, let me take a quick peek into my records and list the top five. And they are (in order from the beginning of the year)… Steamboats Come True (Review) – A very interesting history of the development of the steam boat and its importance to the settling of America. With a […]