Blog – Page 11 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

May 22, 2011

Birthing agonies

I’m really getting tired of this POD (print on demand) world. The first time around, when I did the agent-publisher deal, it was so easy. I signed a contract, the publishers changed the cover without telling me, they gave me a single day to review the final cut, and then the publisher died as it hit the shelf, the company went into chapter seven and I didn’t get a dime. Nice and straightforward. This POD stuff is supposed to be easy. I signed onto CreateSpace and then got a book about it. Found out well into the book that CS […]

May 22, 2011

OpsLog – Chicago & NorthWestern – 5/22/2011

I’m pretty down as I push the throttle to Run 3, getting the cut of colorful billboard reefers moving out of Chicago, my SP geeps clattering west over sunlit rails. I’m through Proviso, banging over the switch points, swinging onto the left-running main. As the train strings out, I sort through my waybills, not that it matters. I’m train 105 west, last train of the session, last session for this layout. Richard’s downsizing from this house, moving to an apartment. No room for this pike. I’d like to say I was somber, that memories were flashing through my head as […]

May 23, 2011

Name dropping

I’ve got a Road ID, which, as you can see from the link, is a handy corpse-tag that goes around your wrist, helpful to paramedics and morgue workers to figure out what to do with what’s left of you after a motorist boo-boos you. It velcros fast and contains my name and contact numbers (and that I don’t have any allergic reactions). Nice to have. Until it fell off – somewhere along Fridays’ ride in, it somehow came loose. Got to work, it wasn’t on my wrist. Backtracked to the loading dock, it wasn’t there. Got home and checked around […]

May 25, 2011

OpsLog – LM&O – 5/25/2011

I’m running up the long hill towards Harris Glen, “66” glowing on my E-8’s number boards, the cool air flowing down my passenger train’s orange and red livery. It’s a busy night on the line – lots of activity around Pittsburgh when I pulled out. People standing around the phones, waiting for warrants. The railroad is pretty jammed with numerous extras out on the iron. But that’s Bob’s problem. Tonight, the usual dispatcher gets to run! Ahead of me, I can just make out the tight siding at Harris where the caboose of overdue 202 is just, only just getting […]

May 27, 2011

Ugh

Woke up on my free Friday with a sense of dread. I could only lay there hating today, wishing I’d gone to work. It’s like I’m facing the gallows. I guess it goes without saying that I hate hosting ops. I’m like an actor who has performed King Lear hundreds of times but still gets hysterical before the curtain goes up. I read of model railroader hosts who do a little set up, a little tinkering, and eagerly await their operators. Me? I just sit and slowly freak out. And it’s such a tempest in a teacup. After my shower, I started working […]

May 28, 2011

Incendies (review)

Incendies plays out like a book. It starts on the perfect hook and slowly the mystery is unwrapped, allowing the audience to suddenly realize (at their own pace and perception) the core of the story. In this sense, the hook is masterful. A daughter and son are meeting with the attorney of their Lebanese mother’s estate – she’s passed away after suffering a seizure at the local pool in present-day Canada. So first the kids are surprised when mom’s burial instructions are a tad… unconventional. But then the hammer blow – each is given a letter. The daughter is to […]

May 29, 2011

Posting for art

Well, I’ve taken the first big step in getting Early ReTyrement ready for publication – I’ve contacted an Indian firm named “Animation Saints” to do my cover. It’s not the price so much as their animation style that caught me. It’s just what I was looking for (well, what I was really looking for was a well-known comic/historical artist to do it, be he declined after the pitch). So we’ll see. This is the first cash outlay to get this thing to market – big step. I’ll post our progress. I’m really hoping I’ll get these guys. (oh, and I’m […]

May 29, 2011

OpsLog – SP Coast Line – 5/29/2011

I’m at the throttle of GP-9 5417, a brute of an engine in the early fifties, big and black and boxy, nothing like those bullet-like F units still working about the railroad. This is the shape of things to come, utility over form, but I’m glad for that. These monsters are blowing heat and smoke like a river boat, their dynamic brakes howling as I come down out of the Lucita Range with tons of beets bulging over to tops of their open hoppers. The pressure is on – I departed San Luis Obispo with train 923 assembling in my […]

June 1, 2011

The morning after

It’s a misty morning, the film of dew drifting over silent fields. In King City, things are waking up. The helper engine pops and hisses on the siding, its steam confusing the mists. The Coast Mail, Train 72, has just made its long stop at the nearby platform, the station help yawning as they heaved the bags up. Now it’s gone, the wig-wags motionless now that their guarded rails are empty. Over to the left, you can see the head end of the beet string I’d left on the sugar refinery spur the evening before. They’ve been unloading through the […]

June 5, 2011

Thinker

So this isn’t only once or twice. Every time I go to the bathroom at work (not the touch and go numbah one, but the big brown effort), one of the two stalls is closed. I’ll sit on my own little seat and there will be a set of shoes under the wall, as motionless as an Afghan rifleman in the rocks. Worse, bathrooms are tiled, perfect for magnifying sounds. Knowing there will always be a certain… um… outburst… (in the words of HG Wells, “He compared it to a colossal puff of flame suddenly and violently squirted out of […]