robert.admin – Page 6 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

July 28, 2025

OpsLog – FEC – 7/26/2025

ne of my favorite runs – the Florida East Coast. And funny anecdote – I’d been dispatching so much recently (twice this week already) that when I wrote Ken and asked if maybe I could just run trains this time, he quickly agreed, making me double-think it. Was I not that good? Did I do something wrong last time? Why doesn’t he beg me to run the panel? Turns out he wanted to run a more intimate session (not with candles and romantic music and a valentine chocolate box, no, but with only five engineers in the room. He’d generated […]

July 27, 2025

Hammer’s Slammers (Review)

his is one of the classics from the year I left high school, a watermark novel about a futuristic mercenary tank group, their armor no longer obtainable as economies falter (but the need for them growing, for the same reason). So the Slammers move from planet to planet, signing contracts and squishing rebels, militias, and other poorly-armed rabble. The thing is, Drake really did a good job charting out what futuristic combat might turn into (and it’s borne fruit in the half-century since this book’s release). These massive hovertanks are monitored and guided from orbit, swatting down artillery shells with […]

July 24, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O – 7/23/2025

ell, that was satisfying. We got out a solid session last night. Everyone knew what to do to set up. Pre-brief was quick. The clock started and (I’m happy to say) we didn’t get a single LNER (not an English railroad company but a line error on the clock when the system shorts hard). Outside of one helix delay, everything ran fairly smooth. I don’t know about you lugs, but I had a pretty enjoyable time. A couple of real notable events. I didn’t get ANY calls for help to the dispatcher over the radio. Crews really did “work it […]

July 24, 2025

Unicorns and Rainbows (DOG EAR)

mid the rolling green hills with their scattering of humans, the vast giants meet in council. So the setup here is my model train club (Orlando N-Trak, or ONT). We’ve been doing this all my adult life, since 1987. I’ve helped build it, I help run it, I help promote it. And tonight, I had to set up the waybills so engineers know where their freight cars are going. With six mainline freights and seven local trains, we’re moving something like fifty to seventy cars. We need to doublecheck to ensure they all start where they are papered to start, […]

July 20, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O (TT&TO) – 7/20/2025

‘m not sure if everyone is basking in the glow in the aftermath of ops, proud of how they managed to navigate the Byzantine rules of Time Table and Train Order, or still fuming in frustration and resentment. I will admit that it can be difficult, very much so, to do. However, on the plus side, you aren’t just spinning a knob and zipping a train under mother-may-I. And for a club to pull it off, well, that’s nothing short of amazing. We’ve done it various TT&TO formats before:full sets of clearance cards and orders, stapled together. Then the packets […]

July 20, 2025

Solo Kill (Review)

o here’s an interesting concept from 1977, an alien world where flying humanoid reptiles have been preying on fish people. And since these fish people can’t fight for shit, they make a contract with the March People (cats, it appears, what with the fur, sliding claws and quick tempers) to fight their wars for them. So these fish somehow figure out how to build nimble biplanes (I’m thinking Newport 11s) and, quickly, dart-driven machine guns to protect everyone. So that’s the set up; cats in planes dogfighting (catfightng) with spear-throwing bats. Author S. Kye Boult (not his real name) produced […]

July 17, 2025

Life (DOG EAR)

‘ve always had a grimace in my heart for the word Lifestyles. Your life, your one time through this passage of existence, is really what you make of it. We all have different opportunists and situations. A person born of majority race and wealth has a bit of a leg up over a poor minority child saddled with leukemia (especially in times when tax cuts for the wealthy and open beatings for the downtrodden are a popularity political stance (fucking fascists)). It’s what it is. You play your hand as best you can. Which is why I dislike the idea […]

July 13, 2025

ShowLog – Deland – 7/12/2025

ig one-day show for us over in Deland, make quite exciting because I’d be show boss and Old Man Raiford would not be around for set up. Had a new driver, Leonard, who took away any concerns on my part by moving the trailer around like a seasoned switch crew with a boxcar (though that plastic parking post was a little worse for wear after we went through). But anyway, even though the fairgrounds are now locking up their gates overnight, we still manged to worm both mini and maxi (the truck and trailer) on for a 6:30-ish arrival. Since […]

July 13, 2025

Destroyermen 15: Winds of Wrath

nd we’re done! It’s been a long fifteen books about the plucky little destroyer, the USS Walker, chased by the Japanese out of World War Two and into this alternative world where velociraptors and lemors evolved to sentience, where English Indiamen, Spanish conquistadors, a boatload of American artillerymen from the Mexican-American war, a battle group from a fascist Europe and even a Q-ship from World War One came into being. Yes, a long slow slog against baddies so bad they made your teeth hurt. And all through this, I kept waiting to find out that the series had ended prematurely, […]

July 10, 2025

The mutter about clutter (DOG EAR)

t’s a societal/sexual thing – we all really want some Japanese semi-dominatrix like Marie Kondo to force us to get rid of all our stuff. “No, mistress, please! Not my exorcise stuff in the garage!” “All of it! To the curb, worm!” Really, in a way, she is right. We tend to keep too much shit. And if the first use of the internet is porn, the second is consumerism. No longer do we have to walk to the market, buy something impractical, and carry it all the way back to our farm. Now it’s one simple click. Across our culture, […]