robert.admin – Page 43 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

July 29, 2023

On Sheet – When Things Go Wrong

any of you might remember that incident we had on Tusk Hill (a division of my Tuscarora layout, where we run an English Midlands session rather than a western Pennsylvania one). Here is the disaster report. So the designer/builder Steve (a good friend whose help has been critical in the development of my microlayout) came out to the club (where we keep it) and took a look at it. He checked the obvious possibilities (particularly the solder joints) and after two hours gave up. It would take a lot more work. So he loaded it into his car (yay, microlayouts) […]

July 27, 2023

Missed Communications (DOG EAR)

hen I was a young lad of twenty or so, I was in a long-distance (i.e. stupid) relationship. To talk to my west coast girl, I had to wait until 11pm Sunday night (8pm her time) to afford the crippling long distance changes. Turns out, in retrospect, I should have just flushed the money down the toilet. Oh well. But what bugs me is the world we live in now. People have phones that can instantly, cheaply connect you with anyone around the planet. Often in coffee shops, I’ll hear young people taking call after call, text after text, fully […]

July 27, 2023

OpsLog – LM&O – 7/26/2023

ormally Frank runs a passenger train with Conductor Greg, but Greg was out of town and Frank looked like a lost puppy for ops night. From the cab of my idling geeps in Martin Yard, I saw him standing in dejection, so I offered him a run on the Zanesville Turn (with work up to Carbon Hill). “It’s not going to be varnish work,” I warned him. “There’s more to switching work than trying not to spill the passengers’ soup.” But he was game. Since we already had a warrant, we were first out of the yard, pressing for Mingo […]

July 24, 2023

OpsLog – WAZU – 7/23/2023

don’t think I’ve every run warrants so fast and so long. In three hours, I wrote ninety-three of them. Yes, it was a busy day on the WAZU railroad. Not without goofs, of course. Writing that fast, you can get in trouble. I did clear a train into Spokane when the Lumber Jack run was coming out – a bit of a headlight thing there. But then again, I did have some phenomenal meets. Twice I got five trains past each other at single sidings (by cramming two in tight on the siding while three ran past). Of course, even […]

July 23, 2023

The Wager (Review)

o this is a first – my wife pushed an age-of-sail book on me for once. And it was very, very good. So the HMS Wager was one the ships in Commodore Anson’s floating boat-wreck of a mission, to round Cape Horn (at the tip of South America) and get into the Spanish Pacific, to loot, burn and steal (i.e. open piracy and murder with the hint of legitimacy that war brings). Easy plan – they’d round the world and be back by tea, right? Well, first, they are hounded by Spanish warships since even Irish children knew this mission […]

July 23, 2023

OpsLog – FEC – 7/22/2023

smell something burning.” I was working the out-n-back from Cocoa Yard to Frontenac, fussing over mismarked lading slips, trying to figure out what someone did and didn’t do a couple of weeks back in City Point (without a Rosetta Stone, either). And that’s when I smelled smoke. Engineer Chip was working the lower deck. When I asked him if his engine was on a switch, he told me no. But a car on his train was on a switch, one that had been set against him. And the truck of a wheel delicately placed with love between a rail and […]

July 21, 2023

On Sheet – Sound Check

ou know, DCC is a wonderful thing. Now we can drive trains and blink the lights and sound the whistle and bell. I’ve always wondered what those rheostat twisters in the ’50s would have thought of us now with all our digitalized magic. Just the options of not relying on electrical blocks allows us to run helpers and do all sorts of cool things. However, one thing that always bugs me is when, during operations, you see an engineer just driving along, toot-tooting his whistle in patterns only known to him, as cute yet pointless as Thomas the Tank Engine. […]

July 20, 2023

Time in ReTyrement (DOG EAR)

ne thing that the wags are quick to point out is how much spare time I have in retirement. Yes, after thirty years of programming and management, I’m apparently lounging on a Nile barge, eating grapes, looking out over vast horizons and sighing. Or something like that. Let’s see. Right after I retired, the world went to shit with Covid. During that time, I built a brand new layout (fundamentally different from everything). I also biked about 4000 miles. And I reffed a role playing game online, and hosted a Scurvy Dice game weekly. Then, as Covid went into the […]

July 16, 2023

Destroyermen 3: Maelstrom (Review)

he third book in The Destroyermen series did not disappoint. Whereas the first two books of the string only had the Americans (and one Japanese guy) in USS Walker, the Mahan, the Amagi (with the rest of the Japanese guys), the Lemurs and the nasty, toothy Grik, now we’ve added a couple of more power factions to this world. Since the Great Swarm didn’t work out so well for the Grik last book, they might as well try it again, this time fully backed by the big old Amagi, helmed by its frothing Japanese captain (who was perfectly fine with […]

July 16, 2023

OpsLog – Tusk Hill (Annulled) – 7/15/2023

know that Kyle put in a lot of work for the first “true” run of Tusk Hill – instructions, tokens, switchlists, everything. And I know that some people drove a very long way (Jim from St. Augustine and Ben from Celebration, and, taken for granted, Greg from Satellite beach). So we handed out paperwork, got the briefing and began. Jim was working both the coal job and the tally sheet and he seemed to be getting his head around how the Tusk works and how things are represented. Greg was standing by to take the shunter position. I ran up […]