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February 1, 2024

OpsLog – P&WV – 1/31/2024

had a question about Avella Freight East and was told that owner Tom Wilson was out on the driveway. Bad sign. Went out and found him with the garage door up, his screwdriver sparking as he desperately worked across an array of terminal strips. As his layout fills his two-car garage, the only way to get to his wiring is to open the door and work on it from the outside. So it was all Star Trek stuff, exploding consoles, sparks and smoke. Or maybe I’m exaggerating. I might be trying to distract myself from the fact that the last […]
February 1, 2024

Duel of the Samurai (DOG EAR)

t was an interesting day. My friend Chris models (indirectly) the railroad yard at Taft, south of Orlando. Of course, the only real way this game executive and dad can really get an idea of the actual industries and scenery is google maps. You just can’t really stroll onto railroad property anymore, not with the railroad cops and hobos (both equally dangerous). So I suggested making a day of it using SunRail, our local north-south heavy rail than runs down the CSX lines into Taft (which he wants to see up close). So we did. It was a nice ride […]
January 29, 2024

OpsLog – WAZU -1/28/2024

‘m kind of guessing that seconds before the WAZU railroad started, our host Doc Andy was dreaming that all his operators might somehow spontaneously combust. If that did happen, he could have used the dust buster to sweep us up. Then he’d turn out the lights and lock the door. And that would be that. At go time, the layout clocks were totally messed up (I am very familiar with the brand he uses yet I had no idea why I couldn’t slave/master them correctly). And his dispatching computer software lasted all of five minutes before crashing. He was already […]
January 28, 2024

V2 (Review)

n interesting story that involves romance, but not in the way you’d think it. Since, of course, it centers around our wood-be lovers on either side of a ballistic rocket with a ton of high explosive in the nose cone. So in World War Two, the Germans have switched to their rockets to get hits on London (they’d be shot out of the sky if they tried to continue their bombing). In retrospect, it was the biggest boondoggle of the war – each rocket carries about as much as a couple of bombers, and allied bombers are coming over the […]
January 25, 2024

OpsLog – LM&O – 1/24/2024

riting this blog is a weird thing. Unlike a manifesto, a blackmail note or a letter to my new Nigerian pen-pal, I have to figure out a new angle each time. I can’t just say what happens: that would be “Tonight those goofballs really found a new way to screw up. Is this any way to run a railroad?”. Further, there is the problem that as one man, I simply can’t describe all the events that took place, any more than a soldier in a foxhole can fully explain World War Two. I see things, I hear things, I pay […]
January 21, 2024

OpsLog – TBL – 1/21/2024

short entry for a short session – our control problems continue on the Tuscarora Branch Line, which means I can’t trust it to operate in any manner and so I can’t invite people to drive hundreds of miles for a dud session. I only hope that Steve the engineering guy comes up with a solution. God, but I hate this constant on again / off again failure. My friend Greg came over to run with me (hey, we had movie-night lined up after, so not a total loss). We only managed to run half a session before the constant failures […]
January 21, 2024

Tales from Watership Down (Review)

ne of my most influential books on my writing and storytelling was Richard Adams’ Watership Down. While the story is reviewed by me HERE, it is, in a nutshell, a story of an epic quest and a stirring battle as a band of rabbits leave a doomed warren for their holy high ground, which is Watership Down (a hillock in England). Anyone I respect as a reader has cracked this one open. Great story. I even convinced a mother and her daughter to read it as related HERE. Got a Christmas card from them and they have completed (and loved […]
January 19, 2024

On Sheet – you can’t know it all

kay, I really like TT&TO (Time Table and Train Order) operations. I run that on both of my layouts. I also fly all the way across the country to run at La Mesa under this method. Ever since Steve King invited me to his layout and gave me a write-up on it, I’ve been a fan. I’ve even given a clinic about it at the Protorails convention and been asked to re-give the clinic at private layouts. I’m getting ready to dispatch it in June on the Western Bay RR. I thought I was pretty clever. One place where I […]
January 18, 2024

The game is afoot! (DOG EAR)

ames are media and so they get an occasional spot on my media-blog. And here it is! The thing about games is how diverse the field is now. Using Steam, you can choose from thousands of games of any genre you prefer. It’s all there. My first game (and the reason I signed up on Steam) is Spelunky. Originally a freebee eight-bit game, in Spelunky, you play the role of a spelunker who is trying to get to the bottom of a maze of tunnels. The remake (the first, not “2”) really was my prefect go-to comfort game – there […]
January 15, 2024

ShowLog – Deland – 1/(13-14)/2024

‘m not sure how to write this show report up. I could start with a description of getting up at 5am Saturday, a quick shower, a drive to the donut shop to pick up treats for the setup crew, and then hissing through empty streets in moderate rains, hoping it would let up before it was time to unload the trailer I would shortly be rendezvousing with for setup. Or the host of problems we faced, from inexplicable radio problems to a dead section of track to some scenery problems here and there. We should have brought the “Robert” button. […]