robert.admin – Page 66 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

March 20, 2022

OpsLog – LM&0 – 3/19/2022

t’s said that no plan survives the first contact with the enemy. It is also true for timetables surviving the first day’s operations. So Orlando N-Trak attempted something few clubs have ever tried – we ran a Saturday Night Special session under Time Table & Train Order. This (as you know) is the method used by most lines from 1840 until 1960 (or later). Essentially trains proceed by rights established by class and direction, making meets at established locations when they can, and earlier (if facing superior trains) when they can’t. And extras? They need to swim upstream keeping an […]

March 16, 2022

Game Reaper (DOG EAR)

ames are media, too. Which is why I’m covering this here. I’m currently writing a game called Pathfinder. The game focuses on a pathfinder ship that has the ability of slingshot around the sun and go up to the speed of light. Even at this speed, the average distance between stars is four light years, meaning it will take four years or more per jump. Of course, most of the crew can go into suspended animation in their sleep bunks for the flight, but a skeleton crew will need to be assigned (and they won’t be happy to lose four […]

March 13, 2022

Other Orlandos (Review)

‘m aware of Burrow Press, the local literary core for Orlando. They produce a number of books for this market, very local. You almost get the idea that deals are made in coffeehouses, and discoveries are made on poetry reading nights. Yes, I’ve read a number of their books, and enjoyed them, in general. Other Orlandos was an ambitious idea – publish short stories that involved Orlandos outside the city of Orlando, be it places, people or whatever. Okay. To me, I have an attachment to place more than to name but I gave it a try anyway. There were […]

March 10, 2022

Hard Time (DOG EAR)

o some of you might be wondering where I’ve been recently. No book reviews. No DOG EAR. Well, I’ve been in the jug, the slammer, the big house. Yes, I’ve been in FaceBook jail. There was a discussion that noted that we, as citizens of the United States, should resist calls to hate Russian local businessmen and immigrants for their crazy leader’s invasion of Ukraine (though, from the long view, it looks a little like Iraq, doesn’t it?) But, yes, I agree. But I couldn’t help to point out my own thoughts of our “educated citizenry”… Well, it’s true. We […]

March 6, 2022

OpsLog – WVN – 03/05/2022

rinding into Harris Yard after the long ascent up the mountainous grade above Elkview. Rumbling under my metal unadjusted (inside joke) seat is the first of two GP7s (after a mixup at Ashbury left me standing at the ready track, litter rustling around my feet, no engines). Haivng been reassigned these fine units, I did the in-and-out switching on local 252 easily. So now I’m in Harris with a coal train idling next to the unloader track (the crew hunched over their orders) and a red board on the Clifton Forge line, denoting a wesbound arrival. I’ve only got a […]

February 28, 2022

OpsLog – WAZU – 02/27/2022

o, if we thought we were running a lot of trains in tight confines for the LM&O the other night, we were sadly mistaken. The WAZU (running from Spokane to Portland) was the place to be in Oburg on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. Great Guns, but was it a brisk day on the highline! So, since our last shaky session, we saw a number of improvements. First off, Bill’s card system was in full force this time around. This meant that the yards were busy and there were actually a couple of real life locals in place (maybe Bob K […]

February 27, 2022

Peril (Review)

ut front with my thoughts, the book is as difficult to read as Old Yeller. But in this case, we’re not seeing the death of an old dog but rather our democracy. Peril, written by Woodward and Costa (two political writers with the chops to drill into this), looks at the final year of the Trump administration, the election, and the first year of Biden’s administration. In that, it reads like a slow car wreck, with Trump poo-pooing the virus, demanding corners to be cut to get it to market before the election, the “steal”, the moaning and carping when […]

February 24, 2022

Goliath’s Gun (DOG EAR)

am a fan of Goliath, a show on Amazon. It was a great four-season story about a very shrewd lawyer who lives out of a bottle in a Malibu bar, brought back from the pasture by a case involving is suspicious boating accident. It’s a fun set, with Billy Bob Thornton playing it to the hilt, amicable and shrewd all at once. I loved the line where an apposing corporate attorney tries to bluff him by asking if he’s trying to make a million or so in settlement and Thornton replies, “I’m going to reach up your client’s ass and […]

February 24, 2022

OpsLog – LM&O – 2/23/2022

don’t know why it is. I’m like a symphony conductor who has directed a piece hundreds of times and still feels like he needs to throw up into the tuba section right before the performance commences. I always get uptight before a session, even if it’s only the club. But club ops are a big deal. We have a lot of people who only come out for the ops. And tonight showed why that was. We shined tonight. We had a bunch of guests and a lot of members ready to run. I was actually amazed at the traffic – […]

February 20, 2022

The Invention of Sound (Review)

id you know that psychopaths do not yawn, at least not when you do? And that all those screams you hear in movies – those aren’t the actors themselves but actually come from licensed recordings, used and used and used again, hundreds of times? Chuck Palahniuk, whom you might remember from Fight Club, recently dropped The Invention of Sound onto bookshop shelves. I found my copy in a curbside library (possibly thrust there by a reader with less literary constitution than I have). And I’m going to tell you up straight – The Invention of Sound is one of the […]