robert.admin – Page 56 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

February 2, 2023

OpsLog – CSX Taft – 2/2/2023

et my friend Chris Strecker for an early morning breakfast, followed by an invite to his house to try operations on his blossoming layout, a simulation of car spotting in Taft Yard in Orlando, Florida (yeah, right down the road). His layout is one of those elegant small layouts (where you aren’t throwing track across a basement). Basically it’s a dogbone with two staging tracks on the back wall and a host of industries along the leading edge. Chris has actually placed a number of real places on his line (and a couple of fictitious ones at well (and who […]

February 2, 2023

Sign Language (DOG EAR)

ometimes I’ll craft a word up whose meaning is obvious. And sometimes someone will tell me it isn’t a “real word”. To that, I explain, “If you know what I meant and what I communicated to you, then it serves as a ‘real word’. Information was communicated.” Noticed it today while driving the wife to breakfast. In our little neighborhood in Orlando, originally Virginia was a neighborhood street. Sometime along the way, the city sacrificed about a hundred front lawns and made it four lanes (me, I think if you want to live way outside of town, you should deal […]

February 1, 2023

OpsLog – TBL – 1/31/2023

t was a special Tuesday Night session of the Tuscarora Branch Line. Things will be busy for a couple of weeks and since the last session went so well, I wanted to try some new things. We had many changes and many failures. First off, I mentioned on another blog retrofitting an old Rapido Pacific Fruit Express car I’d had for ages. Nice car, 1920s vintage, good detail. However, the coupler was mounted on a fixed shaft so there was no way to just swap trucks. Instead, I sawed off the couplers and body-mounted a new set. Turns out my […]

January 29, 2023

The Lion and the Unicorn (Review)

o yes, I’ll bet you are thinking this will be another Nine Princes in Amber reviews with a title like this.No, I’m back to reading the Ark Royal series, where the humans (as of this book, the fifteenth of the series) are fighting a virus that has the human fleet against the wall, and seemingly will not stop until all of humanity are its wretched, brainless slaves. And this book is probably one of the best of the lot, since the original Ark Royal. In seeking new weapons systems, the designer on Earth have come up with an interesting idea. […]

January 29, 2023

OpsLog – FEC – 1/28/2023

This is the first of five sessions I’m attending over the next week. And for me, it didn’t go so well. Look, on the Florida East Coast, I’m known as the ace of the base on the dispatcher panel. I can just sit back and make that railroad dance. But this session, I was “Trim”. What’s “Trim”? Do I work in a mall haircut joint and take a little off the sides? No, I work part of the sprawling Hialeah Yard. When trains enter (and stop at the drop off point) I pick up the engines and bring them into […]

January 27, 2023

On Sheet – Back to Basics

o you might have read about our crazy op session the other night (detailed and derailed HERE). So it was a tough night – I ran around sweating like a pig, even though my only job (the Shelfton Turn) ran ten feet out, switched in one quick runaround to hit all the trailing turnouts, dropped and came back in to work a short branch run to Iron City Brewery. Total wait time – one and a half hours. Total running time – thirty minutes. Not such a good night. But club fun night wasn’t over. I stayed until 11pm so […]

January 26, 2023

OpsLog – LM&O – 1/26/2023

ourteen and a half hours. A lot can happen in fourteen and a half hours. And this was in 10:1 clock time, so that was (in real time) just under an hour and a half. That’s how long number 902, the Shelfton Local, had to wait to get a warrant from a newbie dispatcher (yeah, Steve H, your humiliation begins. All newly minted DS-Deskers get it). And my order would have been one checkbox. Go to Shelfton. Man, it’s what, four real-feet away? Leave the yard, cross over, go into the cutoff. (And to think – I’m the guy who […]

January 26, 2023

Speaking “Ute” (DOG EAR)

ing ting!” went the bell of the coffee house. “One cup, black, please,” I told the young guy behind the counter. He eyed my shirt. “Hey, which anime is that?” I had to look down – I wasn’t sure how I dressed that morning. “Oh, this is ‘My Hero Academia.” He told me his roommate watched it but he loved Bleach. I had to confess that I was dragging through it. Once the coffee was up, I went outside to read in the sun. But it was interesting that we could chat over a shirt. Look, I read some manga […]

January 23, 2023

The Hand of Oberon (Review)

don’t think I’m a very good reviewer at times. Like now, when I have to check the wiki page for The Hand of Oberon, the fourth book of the Amber series. I read about a part where (near the end) the evil guy uses his jewel to freeze a second-class good guy, but the guy’s hand (artificial) reaches up and strangles the crap out of the villain. And even through the baddy teleports out of danger, the heroes decide that somehow, someone set things up so that the bad guy would get close to this good guy (and with a […]

January 22, 2023

OpsLog – TBL – 1/21/2023

fter a long weekend at a train convention (and two weeks of ensuing covid isolation) I was able to return to duty on the Tuscarora. The railroad surgeon cleared me for service. And back I went to the dispatcher’s desk. Also on duty was Kyle (on interlocking), his father Phil (on Scheduled trains) and Greg (on Coal). Yes, so we had a rusty lever-thrower, a rookie on the timetable and a coal guy who forgot how the tally sheet worked. I guess that’s why we ran four hours on the session. Still, Phil (even though he is a model railroader, […]