robert.admin – Page 65 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

June 23, 2022

OpsLog – LM&O – 6/22/2022

y original plan was to run a through freight with my new Pennsy F’s, but it turned out I was the only dispatcher on deck so back into the office I went. Smooth night with a good turnout. Crews were meeting their on-call times (if not a little before). The layout is running better (though the metal wheels continue to cause cursing and might result is us switching the worst offenders back unless a better alternative is found). Once I reminded people to call clear of the main, they generally did. In this, I got to focus on my panel. […]

June 20, 2022

OpsLog – TBL – 06/19/2022

ather’s Day in Tuscarora, Pennsylvania, 1962. It’s a lazy weekend in the middle of summer. Somewhere in this idyllic town, boys are playing softball with their fathers. Being Sunday, the industries down by the tracks are closed. And with shippers being closed, the usual through traffic on the railroad is non-existent. But the mines are still working and eastern coal consumers, the powerplants and the export docks are in full swing. And for that, the rails are still humming from the passage of coal drags. Given the increasing length of the trains, the Pennsy has taken the RS units out […]

June 19, 2022

The Seas That Mourn (Review)

o I was looking for something other than cutting edge scifi and saw this book on my wife’s done stack, something she got from somewhere that had caught her eye, The Seas That Mourn, by Patrick D. Smith. Now, I didn’t know about Mr. Smith but have since found out that he is a very popular Florida writer and has a section of State Road 520 named after him (which I’ve driven a lot of times and never noticed). Of course, this honor was done by a governor before they started using their office to ban books and punish gay-tolerating […]

June 17, 2022

On Sheet – Just die!

o I was asked to explain all the facets of model railroad operations, to spool this out and gradually teach you how to research, string diagram and prototype your operations so you’ll have ops so successful you’ll need velvet ropes and a bouncer to keep things manageable. But you aren’t sure about ops and want to try, just you, on your little home layout? So here’s what you do. Go into the den and loot through your board games, Risk or Monopoly or whatever. Take a single six-sided die from the box. Now, on your layout, build a train with […]

June 16, 2022

Cartoon Characters (DOG EAR)

aw an interesting thing on a walk – I was trudging up 17-92 (a four-lane arterial street with businesses down both sides). Over this all towers a billboard and on this billboard as an ad for emergency room availability. Personally, having had to rely on their emergency room service, I’m mixed on their claims. But it wasn’t the claims that caught my eye – it was the image. A nurse, arms crossed, looking all competent and in charge. Now look, I’m enough of a realist to know that nurses you see in advertisements are likely from central casting. And I […]

June 12, 2022

The Dark Forest (Review)

he Dark Forest is the follow-up book to Cixin Liu’s fantastic The Three Body Problem. As you’ll remember, the Trisolarian race, with intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes* and have launched an invasion fleet to destroy humanity and use Earth as their new homeworld (if you know what the three body problem means, you might better understand why this is). The good news is that the invasion fleet will take 400 years to get here. The bad news is they have launched tiny atomic spies at our Earth, spies that that alter computer data […]

June 9, 2022

A Chinese POV (a story) (DOG EAR)

o I was having one of those bad days – it’s taking forever to get surgery scheduled to get my cancer out and, yes, it freaks me out no end. I’d woken up early with a 5am panic attack and was now using the internet to try to distract myself. And that’s when, a couple of later, a friend (won’t say who) called to gripe about something trivial. Pretty much my involvement in the call was to say “yes” and “no” and “I agree”, just making noises so they thought I was alive. But I’m listening to life’s small little […]

June 9, 2022

On Sheet – 6/9/2022

arrell Maples asked if I’d contribute to the group. Since it’s what I do best – writing for free – how could I turn him down? It’s what I was born to do. So I’ll be contributing these On Sheet postings, short pieces about model train operations, why they are fun and how you can get involved in them (by yourself or with two dozen or more people). I’ll start my first bit with a sorta-quote (I might not be exact) from Atlas Shrugged (the book, of course). In it, a woman who runs a railroad mentions that trains are […]

June 5, 2022

Gods of Risk (Review)

es, the trilogy covering The Three Body Problem are all big books and I’m enjoying them immensely. But good things take time and I have a weekly review to run. Sooooo I’m pulling in another short story from The Expanse novella collection, Memories Legion, specifically Gods of Risk. Not quiet sure why this (or any of the books) are named as they are. Asides, it’s a novella (and a bit of a long one) from the POV of Gunny Draper’s (i.e. Bobby’s) brother David. We know from the show that he got involved with cooking for a pusher and ended […]

June 2, 2022

The Cure (DOG EAR)

o last Sunday I reviewed The Cure, a book by Sonia Levitin that details the persecutions of the Jews in Strasbourg in 1348. In a nutshell, the Jews of that town (like in every other place across Europe at the time) were blamed for the Black Death that was sweeping through. The claims that Jews were poisoning the wells were backed by the solid evidence gained by barbaric torture. And it’s all historic fact, as Ms. Levitin outlines in her epilogue. Fine and dandy. I love, after reading a novel, to find out just what is true and what isn’t. […]