robert.admin – Page 30 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

November 27, 2022

Nine Princes in Amber (Review)

icked this one from the best stocked used bookstore I know, my favorites shelf in my Florida Room. This was one of Roger Zelazny’s best, written all the way back in 1970 (while I was a tiny creature). I picked it up sometime in the early eighties, reading it in college and loving every page. So it’s been forty years and there I am looking for a book and there is my five volume set. And the book series, it really holds up. Written in that era when Fantasy was in the wake of the Lord of the Rings, when […]

November 25, 2022

On Sheet – Thanksgiving

had a blog all ready to roll. It had to do with how people at clubs can be difficult, and talked about a recent fissure we suffered. There is also a club in town where a member got pissed, came back in with his key and tore out all the bridges he’d built. Yes, it was a nice angry blog about leaving with dignity (and not letting the door hit you in the ass). But then we had a scratch ops session at the club Thanksgiving Eve. Normally the guys like running under warrants. Track warrants tell you what to […]

November 24, 2022

Milk Carton Moment on Carnival Row (DOG EAR)

poilers spoilers spoilers! Spoilers for Carnival Row. For those who don’t know it, Carnival Row is an interesting show on Prime. It tells the tale of a fantasy world where an “English” nation, and specifically a steam-punky “London”, is pressed with a wave of immigration, specifically fairies and satyrs and the like. In the story, it turns out (last call for spoilers!) Piety Breakspear – the wife of the liberal chancellor – has been practicing necromancy (grafting dead things together and bringing them to life of sorts). The hero – Philo Philostrate – gets chased into her lair (under the […]

November 24, 2022

OpsLog – LM&O – 11/23/2022

ven though we had ops last week (look it up – it’s still on the sidebar) we decided to have a pre-Thanksgiving session, the Turkey Trot. Generally, attendance is light so we run something simple – in this case, Time Table and Train Order (the old fashion way). And even with limited staff, we ran (1) four scheduled freights, (2) four scheduled passenger trains, (3) two ore trains, (4) two limestone hauls and (5) SEVEN coal trains! So yes, we probably ran more trains in this session then we do in a normal session. It was great fun, and since […]

November 20, 2022

Dead Iron (Review)

o this one is a steampunk western. With magic. It’s even got an airship in there. Did we leave any genres out? And I love the tag line on the book “America was built on blood, sweet, and gears.” Very cute. So our hero protagonist in this thing is a loner-drifter guy up in the NorthWest in the 1870s or so with a bit of a backstory. You see, Cedar Hunt is a werewolf. And it’s that high-moon-riding time of the month. A boy has gone missing and Cedar wants to find him. The problem is, he’s got to find […]

November 18, 2022

On Sheet – Running Trains

o, I’m a model railroader. I must run a lot of trains, right? Especially now that I’m retired. Let’s see – on Monday through Thursday, I worked on the Journal Box newsletter for the NMRA (specifically, the Sunshine Region, where I am a member). This is a quarterly publication which I do gratis. Mostly, it’s just a lot of editing work. Monday night was also maintenance night at the club. We installed the new chip in Tuscarora and identified a mistake in the interlocking code. Also, I worked on an MOW siding, changed light bulbs and bagged up the trash. […]

November 17, 2022

Word In Edgewise (DOG EAR)

‘ve got three people in my life who really know how to talk. Sometimes I’ll call them for a quick word. A question. Or just to check on on them. Sometimes they call me (usually when I’m playing a game or watching something on TV, sigh). Regardless, once the get their verbal boilers up to pressure, they are full steam ahead, no stopping them. And no getting a word in edgewise. One guy, when he tells a story, fills in every unneeded detail. And in the middle of what he and I both know is tedious exposition, he’ll even say […]

November 17, 2022

OpsLog – LM&O – 11/16/2022

his photo pretty much says it all about the session. This is one of those chilling photos where you are able to see a lot of people right before they die. In this, 223 was coming downgrade, going into a siding that was both counter to his warrant and the rulebook, and detonated against Silver Bullet 2. Oh, the humanity. So many dead. Of course, I just pointed to the warrant that specifically told 223 to take the main. Regrettable about all those dead women and children, but we all know who was driving that train. And at fault. Seriously, […]

November 13, 2022

The Classic Railway Signal Tower (Review)

od, I wish I’d had this book before programming TUSK tower, my computer-driven interlocking tower on my Tuscarora Branch Line railroad. More on that in a bit. So, Interlocking Towers are those control-tower-looking-structures you used to see along railroad lines. They came about because sending crews scrambling about in the middle of the night, in the rain, to align a route for the express sometimes ended up with hard feelings and smoldering causalities. Interlocking Towers were the computers of their era (from the 1880s to the 1960s). The operator, standing in his high perch, would use long levers to set […]

November 11, 2022

On Sheet – On the subject of sheets

n most model railroads, dispatchers usually uses a magnetic board to move trains. Sure, you’ve seen them – a map of the railroad (usually made with thin tape on a metal shelf) where little magnets with train symbols on them are moved about to show the location (or limit of authority) of a train. I’ve even written an Excel sheet that does just that, allowing the user to double click on a train and then double click on the desired location of a train. It works better since it shows EVERY location of the train, not just the start and […]