robert.admin – Page 82 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

July 6, 2021

OpsLog – TBL – 07/05/2021

uick entry but not a duplicate. Yes, we ran the Tuscarora on Saturday. But on Monday there wasn’t much work-session stuff going on so I decided to run a solo session. Ran up a sheet for a switcher local and boosted the effort by two additional cars (the maximum). I gotta say, this is the railroading I built the Tuscarora for. I just ran through the switching, taking about 90 minutes to do so. The Pee-Dee was easy – did it in minimal moves. As it stood, at the end, I wished I’d run off two sheets – I could […]

July 4, 2021

Mr American (Review)

hat better title to review on this Independence Day than Mr. American, a delightful novel from George MacDonald Fraser, the author of the groundbreaking Flashman novels. The novel begins with Mr. Mark Franklin, a soft spoken Yankee, debarking from a liner in Liverpool in 1909. In his possession are the following curious items: a copy of Shakespeare’s works, an old Mexican charro saddle and two Remington pistols in his battered luggage. And also, it seems a bank note for a large amount of money. Mark journeys first to London and meets the beautiful and vivacious ‘Pip’ Delys, a music hall […]

July 4, 2021

OpsLog – TBL – 07/03/2021

here is something quite unique about the Tuscarora Branch Line. Granted, it’s a small layout, only 2×4. But when Greg and I were doing our two-person session yesterday, it was like we were connected to a huge layout, managing a single town as the local switched and coal hoppers paraded past. Good session, too. Everything ran perfect. I think we had one derailment that might have been rough uncoupling. As far as the on-the-ground action, we had quite a session. First off, it seemed that the railroad had let a backlog of empty hoppers build up to the east – […]

July 1, 2021

The Contracting Expanse (DOG EAR)

kay, here’s your warning – if you are a fan of the show The Expanse, you’d better sheer off right now. Spoilers regarding the conclusion of the fifth season lay ahead. Did they all leave? So. Alex’s death. I’ve read the series up through book eight and, of course, Alex does not die. The fab four (James, Naomi, Amos and Alex) remain alive and continually fixing the universe, up into old age. Well, to be truthful, something weird happens to Amos but he’s alive. Sorta. Well, kinda. But Alex is very much alive. But not in the show. At the […]

June 27, 2021

The Librarian of Auschwitz (Review)

‘ll admit I watch Handmaidens Tale and The Man in the High Castle, stories of fascism and purging that comes to our own United States. And always, as I see the political hero worshiping and the insurrection of January 6th, I think Yes, it could happen here. But that’s still only a possibility, of course, a worst-case fantasy. But if you really want to know what it’s like, and what this powder keg near which our own monkeys play with their matches, The Librarian of Auschwitz gives you a full, total accounting of a state gone mad. This is the […]

June 27, 2021

OpsLog – FEC – 6/26/2021

f you wanted to find the last OpsLog on the Florida East Coast, you’d have to go back over a year ago. That’s how long it’s been, the entire span of the pandemic. Still, the session was one of the strictest I’ve seen. Temperature checks. Vaccination records. Full masks. And I respect that (with the new variant filling ICUs again). In fact, on the way to the session we stopped at Wendy’s for lunch. Wore our masks in the line. Sat down in the corner. But then an extended family of unmasked tire-biters sat a table away and we finished […]

June 24, 2021

Gas Pump (DOG EAR)

first saw this very intrusive and face-filling stupidity in San Diego a couple of years ago. It was a long, long session of running model trains all weekend with the La Mesa club. While the rest of the boys hung out at the hotel, I went out into the night to find a gas station so we could return the rental full the next morning. Found a place, got out, activated the pump, and stood in shock when its screen started playing commercials at me. I hate this sort of fuckery when it’s done in airports. It’s bad enough to […]

June 24, 2021

OpsLog – LM&O – 06/23/2021

t was a dark and stormy night… Most penny dreadfuls start this way. And our session on the LM&O felt that way. Lots of guests so lots of people jammed everywhere. Turnout failures. Brain failures. Near misses. Arguments. What didn’t happen on the road tonight? My moment of grace was the Shelfton Local. Even under reduced yard limits and warrants, it was a single slip out and another back. I just had an enjoyable time down that branch, switching cars and staying out of everyone’s banana dramas. And, because good things come to good engineers, when I shuffled my cars […]

June 20, 2021

The Glass Teat (Review)

nother one of those lucky finds in a curb-side library, both books of Harland Ellison’s TV reviews that he wrote while on the staff of the Los Angles Free Press in 1968. It was meant to be a review of what was on the tube each week in the LA area. What it became was a radical criticism in the age leading up to the fall of Nixon. I lived though that time (I was ten) and living (I believe) somewhere in California. Life was nice with brown hills and humming power lines. The sounds from my parent’s TV during […]

June 17, 2021

Berlin (DOG EAR)

have strange one-minute conversations with a SunRail ambassador (another word for the station agent who helps clueless commuters find their ways on and off the trains). I knew her before I retired. And now that I am, I still ride up to my happy bicycling grounds on the north side of town by train. When my train pulls into her station, I pop my head out the door and there she is – we have a minute to chat about books we are reading and then slam goes the doors and off I’m transported. Heard an interesting one from her […]