robert.admin – Page 60 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

July 31, 2022

We have always lived on Mars (take 2) (Review)

o this was one a coworker handed me, a short piece of fiction of a failing Mars colony from Tor Books. Imagine a Mars colony totally cut off. Earth no longer communicates. Dust covers their sky – they’ve not seen the moons or stars or anything. The colony has no resources to expand. All they can do is carefully monitor life support, sending out old folks to die while replacing them with occasional births. Everything is dusty and worn and bleak. So Nina, one of the young women of Mars, turns out to be special. With her suit ripped in […]

July 29, 2022

On Sheet – Inglenook

ame across this the other night, a neat little switching puzzle you can probably do on your own railroad. I know the Tuscarora could do it so I’ll give it a try when I can and let you know how it goes. Okay, so the puzzle works this way. You need a mainline track with enough room for five (5) cars on the main to the left, and three (3) cars and an engine on the right. You also need two sidings that can each hold three (3) cars. Overall, it looks kinda like this: […]

July 28, 2022

Feedback (DOG EAR)

‘m not a big fan of feedback. Feedback lead to the first iteration of this site (Joomla) having to be abandoned (because of weaknesses over time in the app used to allowed it). Now that I’m on WordPress, I’ve disabled it (but I’m still getting it – not sure how they are getting in on one book review). Let’s face it; all content providers see their feedback area as being a coffee shop with polite conversations about the raised topics. And instead, they become roadhouses of belligerence and idiocy. I don’t even engage in these sorts of discussions on Facebook […]

July 28, 2022

OpsLog – LM&O – 7/27/2022

o of course my medical zoom meeting went long. I blew out of the house with 40 minutes til train time, traffic was a bitch, but I came into the lot with ten minutes to spare. And the parking lot was full. Came in lugging my computer and called out hello and everyone gave me rousing hellos back. Given my last few weeks, this was a very nice glow to get. And the guys knew how to set up – the track was all clean, the jobs were signed up, and everyone was ready to go. I set the clocks […]

July 24, 2022

Watching God (Review)

ey, I’m a long-term China Mieville fan. He writes wonderfully and while I don’t often understand everything that is being conveyed to me, it’s usually a treat. Found his name on a collection of short stories titled Out of the Ruins. Possibly I should have peeked at the story he’d contributed to the collection because now, in retrospect, I think I’ve got it elsewhere in my stacks. Anyway, the tale is titled Watching God. It’s a great piece, if not (as usual) a bit esoteric for a guy like me. So in this story, there is a community of people […]

July 24, 2022

OpsLog – FEC – 7/23/2022

ot to moan about it too much, but I’ve only had surgery less than two weeks before this session. I’d seen the crew call for the Farnham’s FEC session and originally bowed out. After all, I didn’t want to collapse into a puddle of blood and other fluids in their train room. But a few days shy of the session, I girded my loins (still a bit painful), wrote them and asked if it wasn’t too late to come out (pre-surgery walking seems to have aided my recovery – that and wanting to run trains). The wife and I got […]

July 23, 2022

On Sheet – On Sheet? What?

few days ago someone asked me why I call this blog “On Sheet” in the first place. Fair question. Let’s take a break from ways to get our tiny boxcars to our tiny industries and chat about how railroads work. Or worked, as in past tense. You might have a small station on your railroad, one with a bay window and a semaphore signal out front. You might have assumed that that signal is to make trains stop and go. So did I until I bumped into Steve King and he got me into the religion of Time Table and […]

July 21, 2022

Droning on (DOG EAR)

inda an observation on media thing today. During my surgery recovery, I’ve taken to playing with my new drone (well, disclosure, my second new drone. The first wild-blue-yondered on me). Anyway, its a Snaptain SP350, and no, no camera. It’s more of a tiny RC plane you can fly around your back yard (except, unlike a plane, you can hover and do all sorts of wacky things with it). If you are looking for a good drone for under $40, this one is your best choice. Flies out of the box. But it’s made me more aware of drones. Sure, […]

July 17, 2022

The Longest Day (Review)

his book got me through a very confusing and disturbing day at the hospital. And for that I’m grateful; both the for companionship and that it was really quite good. It’s book 10 of the Ark Royal series and for this one, we leave the idea of the three-book set (which author Christopher Nuttall did for Ark Royal, Warspite and Vanguard) and focus on the Battle of Earth (which resulted in multiple KEW hits on Earth and the flooding of much of our low-lying coastal cities). England was particularly hard hit and one of the Ark Royal characters had a […]

July 15, 2022

On Sheet – The Right Car for the Right Job

orry I was out – I was recovering from surgery (and no, it wasn’t brain removal). Anyway, last time we talked about using tabs-on-cars as a method of getting a car to a specific industry. This time, let’s make it even simpler – let’s assume that we’ll just switch by car type alone and not worry about reading those teeny tiny numbers or placing tabs on our roofwalks. Most model railroads do this in one shape or form. For example, if you go to a layout with a coal mine, you probably will just shove all the hoppers under the […]