Blog – Page 126 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

August 22, 2018

OpsLog – LM&O – 8/22/2018

ellertown is a siding we put in without much thought. It’s arrow straight for most of its length, a nice elbow-room passing area where sometimes trains can slide by on the roll. Lots of room. We hardly give it a thought. But tonight, it was life and death on this quiet trackage in the shadow of the summit. First up was Extra 3220 west, intermodals heavy and rocking, which we pulled up on the high end of the main. I had two trains cresting the hill, coming his way (414, a coal run, and 202, a drag freight). So neat, […]

August 23, 2018

High baud (DOG EAR)

’m a storyteller. I love stories, how they are put together, how points are emphasized, how they wind around to a conclusion. But I noticed a strange thing the other day in the office. I used to work with middle-aged Indian women and men of roughly my age. I could tell stories and outside of some of my creative uses of language, everything was fine. But most of those folks are gone now and in their places we have a wave of millennials. Now, don’t get me wrong – I’m not here to bust them along the typical lines. They […]

August 26, 2018

King Rat (Review)

n my non-writer side, I’ve been developing a game, StoreyMinus, a little dungeon crawl set in London, it its sewers and tube lines and cellars and ruins, where you can crawl about and try to survive and possibly find the surface once again. It takes a lot of time to code (which I don’t have these days) but it has wetted my interests in London and its below once again. In thinking of this, of all possible scenarios, I remembered a China Miévillebook, King Rat, which I could only vaguely remember. So, because I keep all my old favorites, I […]

August 30, 2018

Dated (DOG EAR)

ne of the problems of writing things fifteen minutes into the future is the fact that, like toy boats on a river, the future slides by us and becomes the past. Remember the old idea that phone lines could be cut, that you’d be out of contact, off the grid, and how quaint that is? Now, it feels like more and more a stretch to show those plot-necessary no-bars. Now adays in modern stories, it’s not happening so much, the idea that the hero’s friends are walking into a trap, and the hero must rush after them to intercept them […]

September 2, 2018

The Lathe of Heaven (Review)

“ have a dream.” A famous speech by the Martin Luthor King, Jr. But George Orr has dreams too. And his can, literally, in a wink, change the world. You see, when George hits deep sleep and dreams, his “effective” dreams change reality. And let’s face it, reality in the 2002 (of this 1971 novel) is pretty sucky. Global warming. Overpopulation. A middle-eastern war spreading out of control (it’s not far off, so it seems). But then George, under the guidance of his government-assigned therapist, Dr Haber, begin to change things “for the better”. Right. In little tests, George can […]

September 2, 2018

Closer (Review)

f there is a story classification that I seldom if ever read, and that includes chick-lit, religious-inspirational and foodie books, it’s sports. I really don’t get into them (possibly because I never was very good at nor very interested in sports). But I have to say that Closer, out of Jurassic’s The End collection, was really, really good. The story starts by informing us that it’s great weather for Baseball, the sun out, the sky clear. And as the bus of baseball players rolls towards the Midwest we begin to discover that something is wrong. Chicago is in ruins. Small […]

September 6, 2018

The Gift (DOG EAR)

lot of people on the train know I’m a reader (I’ve always got a book in my lap (and my Brompton folding bike under my legs)). And everyone on the bus (between work and train station) know I am as well (because I’m always talking about books and listening to others about their recommendations). It’s just who I am. If life was an old black & white World War Two movie, I’d be the guy called “Professor”. I did loan one nice lady on the bus my copy of A Man Called Ove. To my total surprise, she didn’t care […]

September 9, 2018

The Keeper (Review)

t was one of those stupid days in the twilight of my career. The internet connection was down and there was nothing I could do. I didn’t think reading my book was a good idea (even through, quite frankly, that’s exactly the sort of thing we did at the beginning of my career when work computers went down daily). But I really didn’t have anything, nothing outside of my local drives. And then I remembered a downloading of short scifi stories and started listening. At least it would pass the time in this tedious afternoon. Listened to one interesting one, […]

September 13, 2018

Smile (DOG EAR)

ears back, I was reading a Manga comic titled Venus Wars. It was a cool comic and I very much enjoyed it. However, in one scene, the heroes are hiding out in an out-of-the-way sewage reclamation plant. Here, they get critical information from a scientist whom the government banished into the hinterlands. And that’s fine – a time-tested plot device. But, if course, the evil government locates them and suddenly there is an open hatch, an alarm, a video image of guys with machine guns coming down the ladder. The heroes (lovers with guns) dash off with pistols to fend […]

September 16, 2018

OpsLog – TY&E – 9/16/2018

ne thing that’s fun with ops is where people learn skills and improve. I’ve seen it when people who would hardly budge off passenger trains run a freight, then move to locals or yards. But it’s not only operations where I see it – it’s also in layout designs. Two railroads have been rebuilt in our area: the WAZU and the TY&E. And both have had significant improvements to their… presentations, for lack of a better word. Better workspaces, better runs, better location of critical turnouts. On the TY&E, specifically, we’ve seen the elimination the duckunders, reaches and that difficult […]