robert.admin – Page 98 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

February 2, 2020

OpsLog – L&N – 2/1/2020

idway through the session, the two dispatchers (Southern and Louisville & Nashville) switch. We’ve only got a couple of minutes to update our replacement on the status. I don’t know how it was exactly explained to me but it was something like “Train so-n-so is in Norton and will need to go to Blackwood” makes me think that he didn’t have a warrant. But that word “need” seemed to mean something different between Tom and myself. It turns out he actually did have a warrant and was waiting for other traffic to clear before he started down. Fresh on my […]

January 30, 2020

Noticed (DOG EAR)

don’t get a lot of money from this site. My references to other books get pretty much nothing (every month, Amazon mechanically tells me that, a nice confidence builder). So why do I have 1,472 entries on this site? Well, for one, it is still nice to get my own thoughts and interests out there. Look at the success of Facebook and Twitter. But it runs deeper than that. Yes, I might be a lone voice mewing into the night. Sure. And I can’t tell in WordPress (unlike Joomla) how many hits I’m getting. But I do remember I’d get […]

January 29, 2020

MowLog – Cuesta Grade – 1/29/2020

ecided I should keep my blog up to date concerning my layout, especially since I report on every ops session and every show. And the whole point of this is to get my layout back up and running. Okay, so between when I last ran it (two years back?) and now, two furry cannonballs crashed through my booster stations, scattering components. That sucked. Fortunately I had my records as to settings and wires so I was able to rebuild it. I’m handling this now by booster districts – which I have three. As my layout is a loop to loop […]

January 26, 2020

Persepolis Rising (Review)

t’s been thirty years since Captain James Holden sent the last fleet of the Free Navy into a strange unknown using instabilities of the ring gate. Everyone’s getting old. So old, in fact, that Holden and his companion Naomi are cashing out their share of the Rocinante and retiring. Everyone else is sticking to it (with Bobby Draper as the new Captain) except poor Clarissa Mao who is dying from her leaking implants. So they make their plans. And you know about plans. It is then that through the gates sail two ships of the long missing Martian effort to […]

January 26, 2020

OpsLog – FEC – 1/25/2020

ometimes sessions run so well, everything checkboxes through their timetables, every car is spotted at correct doors, everything is perfect. Sometimes. The first running of the Florida East Coast for 2020 was a little day-after-New-Years-ish. Crews were well meaning but sloppy. We had a number of run signals and missed calls. Yeah, and just so everything doesn’t think I’m just casting stones out, on the panel that day I managed two big blunders – dropped a train on the cinders on a miss-aligned turnout in the yard (but, in my defense, greens means go now, Charlie) and I had to […]

January 23, 2020

Breaking Eggs (DOG EAR)

ough day yesterday. Lots of work around the house, cleaning out storage, and getting my model train layout to run. And at the train club it was kinda an off night (meaning a lot of people stood around and gassed while the rest of us picked up the slack). So by the time I’d gotten home and blogged the session, I was pretty beat. Fastwind to this morning, when those two lovable kittens, Chinki and Ritz, were screaming for breakfast at 5am (as always). Fed then and found my way back to bed. With two kittens slumbering (so cutely) on […]

January 23, 2020

OpsLog – LM&O – 1/22/2020

rduous is a brainy word I had to look up for spelling since i don’t use it often. Used in an example: our ops session was arduous. I took the Mingo Turn out first thing at midnight. Fortunately is was still an interchange-only run so outside of a shuffle or two, I had it done pretty quick (and I got to watch a cornfield meet right outside of my cab window). But I had a bad feeling as time passed and I finished my work – Zanesville is further up the line and the turn servicing it had not been […]

January 19, 2020

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (Review)

his book is the words and work of an Indian Writer, Sherman Alexie, and the collection that won him the National Book Award. It’s an odd collection of short stories (Biographical? Fiction? Hard to tell) about life on the rez, the hopelessness, the alcoholism, the despair. Really, I got about ¾ of the way through and had to take a break. Too many Indians escaping the rez yet falling back in. Too many lives turning dark. Look, I’m a liberal softie and I always get depressed when a bunch of tough settlers shoot the shit out of a war party […]

January 16, 2020

No time (DOG EAR)

veryone told me this would happen. “After you retire,” they assured me, “you won’t have any time.” For most of the office workers, I discounted this. I mean, what do they know? But I was hearing it from the retirees too. And yes, I know I’m a pretty busy guy. Trains. Astronomy. Writing. Reading. Travelling. Game Design. Watching damn series on Hulu and Netflix. Yeah, I knew I’d be a bit busy. But then it happened. I retired. So now I’m working that those things and finding I haven’t a spare minute. I’m getting ready to get my old layout […]

January 13, 2020

North to the Rails (Review)

o I was in the middle of a book of collected short stories, thoughtful pieces about reservation life by an American Indian. After a while, the hopelessness and despair of it all got to me. I needed a break. So, what, I read a cowboy book? A bit incorrect. But it’s Louis L’Amour, and nobody does chaps and six-guns like Lou. It’s escapism at its best, just wide-open spaces and all that. In North to the Rails, Tom Chantry comes west to save his soon-to-be-father-in-law by getting a herd of desperately-needed beef to the Union Pacific railhead. Of course, he’s […]