robert.admin – Page 38 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

November 12, 2023

OpsLog – WVN – 11/11/2023

on a golden ticket to run over on the Komar’s wonderful West Virginia Northern. Unfortunately, the night before the session I got a call from my rider – he was running a fever. A quick call to the Komars resulted in his ticket getting revoked and me facing the long solo drive to Tampa in my old aging beater. I mentioned that, if we were short, I could bring my wife instead. They thought they kinda said “Yes”, I thought they said “No” (after all, she is literally a frog in my pocket in ops, not adding to head-count). So […]

November 12, 2023

The Gates of Heaven (Review)

n interesting book off the local used shelf, a scifi from 1980 (Jeeze, forty-three years ago). So the L5 colony is trying to break away from Earth domination and they figure if they can capture an asteroid and mine it themselves, they can be independent. Using a combination of clever misdirection and sling-shotting, they manage to get their rock and head home, but in the final turn around Jupiter, they go slinging into space, flying right into an uncharted black hole and that’s that. Or so we think. A number of years later, an astronomical listening post happens to be […]

November 11, 2023

OpsLog – Tusk Hill – 11/10/2023

o in management positions on the Midland’s railroad we call Tusk Hill, we had Oxford graduates acting in all the positions governing train movements – controller (dispatcher) and leverman. That would be myself and Kyle. We were focused and studious in our efforts to keep trains moving. And in the “Morlock” positions (as we call them), the engine drivers, we had Greg, Jim M and Pete. They were boisterous, rowdy and common as dirt. So what a session this mix made for. Management wanted to see if Tusk Hill could actually run following solid rules – official communications and token […]

November 11, 2023

On Sheet – Sampler Platter

art of the operations game is getting to the point where the layout you operate on is burned into your brain. You know all the switching tricks. You know the how the line is dispatched and know what your authority to proceed is. Everything makes perfect sense. Everything is logical. And with this, I’ve actually known people who have learned our club system but will not go into another layout cold. Worse, they might tell the host that they’d like to “come and watch”. (No host wants this – aisle space is always limited, and we don’t need a lump […]

November 9, 2023

Out of the Box (DOG EAR)

was starting to gear up to assemble the winter issue of The Journal Box. This is a model train newsletter for the local region of the National Model Railroad Association. Years back, a friend of mine needed an editor (the entire publication had fallen off the face of the earth). So I agreed to step in and do it, even though I didn’t know anything about Microsoft Publisher. Slowly learned it and started assembling these quarterly, adding a bit of a whimsical touch and some jokes here and there as I filled the pages with layouts, news, and coverage of […]

November 5, 2023

Gordon Sinclair’s Khyber Caravan (Review)

nother find in a local curbside, a book republished in 1975 (from it’s original back in ’35) about a popular Canadian travel & adventure writer who traveled to and around India. Specifically, he made his way (by car) (with a lot of spare tires) up to Northern India and the Khyber Pass. Look, I’ve done Central/North India too, but that was with a travel guide and a lot of shepherding. This guy just took off in his car with a driver and guide, not knowing where he’d end each day. To me, India was a strange and wonderful place, but […]

November 3, 2023

On Sheet – Sailboats

as out with a person I know the other day. He was going on and on about his RC sailboat club. Now, I remember when they’d have a half-dozen or more hulls in the local lake on Sundays, even more. But their members have been dying or moving away. So now there are two people (sometimes) or just him (more often or not). One thing is for sure – if you are the only boat out there, yes, you win a lot of regattas. I listened to about fifteen minutes of carping about this and finally noted that I’m a […]

November 2, 2023

Memories (DOG EAR)

ad a waking dream today. Woke up remembering a small game store in Cincinnati I went to in the mid-seventies. Small little shop on a twisty downtown street. My friends would pile into my old VW and rattle down there. In the packed shop with its game-stuffed shelves, little Marilyn (how we all had crushes on her) would talk about the latest games (and old favorites still in circulation). I’d nearly forgotten all about that. It’s strange, these little shops that the internet has rolled over. I remember when there were three hobby shops within two miles of my Orlando […]

October 30, 2023

AirLog – 10/29/2023

kay, model railroading has brought me a lot of things. It brought me together with my dad (which, besides reading and old movies, was pretty much all we had). It brought me Orlando N-Trak Club, to which I’ve been a member for thirty-five years. It’s brought me some close friends (and, well, some interesting people). And it’s gotten me into some interesting operational layouts, from La Mesa in San Diego to Steve King’s old Chicago layout to massive weekend sessions in St Paul, Asheville, and Atlanta. And it’s got me as a fixture in various railroads across the state: The […]

October 29, 2023

Artificial Condition (Review)

‘m going to have to go with different tastes here. My sister really liked Martha Wells The Murderbot Diaries. She even reviewed it HERE. So when I was in the used book store I saw one of the series, Artificial Condition, there on the shelf. So yes, I felt duty-bound to pick a copy up and peruse it. It was okay, but it didn’t rock my world. The rough idea is that is a security bot who was involved in a crime where the crew for an entire mine-site was murdered. Having seen some of it and having deactivated his own […]