robert.admin – Page 37 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

December 1, 2023

On Sheet – TT&MMI

ou’ve all heard me go on endlessly about TT&TO (Time Table and Train Order). I love the idea that the operators are forced to put more skin in the game, to read their rules, understand how the railroad works, and consider what moves they will make. On my Tuscarora Branch Lines, we do run TT&TO with pre-printed orders. My operators will hoop them but will not consider what they say sometimes. For example, in the session last week, we had an extra coal movement departing Easton (the eastern end of my little division). Right behind him was a scheduled train, […]

November 30, 2023

Sharp and Short (DOG EAR)

et’s talk about a media I really love – phones! I have to carry a phone originally because I ride a bike in the worst city in America to do so – Orlando, Florida. Here, people fly through stop signs, race too fast, corner without looking or signalling, and if they do crush a cyclist, the jury always lets them off. So yes, a couple of times I’ve ended up with a bent bike on the side of the road, calling for the wife to skyhook me home. Originally I didn’t share the number with anyone. It was my emergency […]

November 30, 2023

OpsLog – LM&O – 11/29/2023

t seemed like a good idea of the time. Look, the “official” session (usually on the fourth Wednesday of the month) was right before Thanksgiving. We did run (detailed HERE). However, some members left town for the holidays (possibly to elude creditors). Others had loved ones to get back home to (or whatever passed as such). Either way, while we did run every freight but one, and every passenger train but one, we missed a lot of the mineral trains and fast freight traffic. But hey, since we have a fifth Wednesday and nobody knew what to do with it, […]

November 27, 2023

OpsLog – TBL – 11/26/2023

ell, it wasn’t the best ops session we’ve had on the Tuscarora. I’m gratified that a number of people drove long distances to be there (107 miles from St Augustine, 68 miles from Satellite Beach, and a drunken crawl in from Tampa at 85 miles). So a lot of people came a long way – I hope they enjoyed themselves. Jury is out for me. I don’t know where to start. So let’s use the blamethrower – what mistakes do I remember? The scheduled freight/switching crew was not well versed in switching (which is half his job). You know the […]

November 26, 2023

Destroyermen 6: Firestorm (Review)

o the war in our strange new world that a WW2 destroyer finds itself in continues to heat up. In the west, a blockade in Southern India goes horrible wrong when the Grik blow up their transports, disabling two of the good guys’ ships and driving them ashore. In the east, in Hawaii (or rather, the New Britain Isles) finds Captain Reddy and his command fighting the traitorous “Company” and it’s twisted Dominion priests in New Ireland. Add to the fact that you’ve got a massive fleet of transport moving towards San Fransisco (a New Britain colony), well, all the […]

November 24, 2023

On Sheet- how does a CTC panel work?

ou might have seen my last posting HERE, where we ran Ken Farnham’s Florida East Coast. I mentioned we have fun and I mentioned his railroad is CTC. So let’s look a little closer at how it works. CTC means “Centralized Traffic Control”. For all that talk I’ve blabbered about TT&TO (Time Table and Train Orders) and Warrants, CTC is one of the newer methods. It requires that signals on the layout can be controlled remotely, and that turnouts have powered relays that can move the points (and also be controlled remotely). The dispatcher, possibly from a desk thousands of […]

November 23, 2023

OpsLog – LM&O – 11/22/2023

t’s a sliver before midnight on a cold, rainy evening in Martin Yard. I’m huddling close to my idling GP-9s, trying to soak in their warmth and shield myself from the drizzle. All I can say is, “Hell of the thing, Shannon. Hell of a thing.” My trains is on track 2, six cars going over to Zanesville and Carbon Hill. Shannon has the shorter run to Mingo but the thing is he’s hauling something like forty cars tonight. I mean, the usual summit-topper drag freights are shorter than that. Forty cars? Did they tear down Mingo Junction and are […]

November 19, 2023

The Hero of Ages (Review)

crossed the finish line! Done. If there’s one thing you can say about Brandon Sanderson’s The Hero of Ages (the third book of the Mistborn) series, is that it’s big. 556 pages big. I’ve been hauling that brick around for a week. But in books, size doesn’t really matter if the book is good. For example, I only wish that Cloud Cuckoo Land had been bigger. But I’m not sure (speaking frankly) that Sanderson used his pages wisely. The story pacing across this thing felt… off. First off, characters tended to moan and complain about their personal problems through this […]

November 19, 2023

OpsLog – FEC – 11/18/2023

t was Donald Sutherland who created the character of the World War Two proto-hippy “Oddball”, who smiles when presenting the coffee-swilling, hookah-puffing, woman-fondling tankers of his command with a dopey yet prideful smile. “These are my boys.” Today, me and some of the N-Trakers ran east to the coast to operate on the Farnham’s FEC. We entered their house in a blaze of gold, thanks to John’s club shirt. The guys (John DeVasto, Zach Bischoff and Jeff Chisholm) as well as myself and my wife, we took our jobs, sat down and did the shit out of them. I’ve run […]

November 12, 2023

OpsLog – TY&E – 11/12/2023

reat session on the TY&E today (even though some of you are hazy on what the word “today” means, since you agreed to be at the session “today”. Whatever). So we were a little short-handed and had to work around the labor pool shortage. In that, I was bumped off my backwater sand and gravel train and ended up running some freights between Youngstown and Tipton (on the high deck, here angels go and I never have). So it was a new experience for me. But it was fine – while I didn’t get in all the switching I usually […]