Blog – Page 17 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

October 10, 2011

OpsLog – Longwood & Sweetwater – 10/10/2011

The trains are streaming out of Orlando Yard at the start of the session, and then the layout goes down. We all look at each other. The owner starts cycling his system. We all help by checking our trains, making sure we’re not on turnouts, we’re not derailed or shorting in any way. The system comes up – briefly – then goes down again. You hate to see it – owners put a lot of time and energy into setup, and they feel a need to provide a good session. But still, with all the electronics a modern digital command […]

October 16, 2011

OpsLog – FEC – 10/15/2011

There were lots of things I could have done Saturday. First off, I was coming off the tail end of a low-grade cold / long workweek, just bone tired and ready to take it easy over the weekend. And there was that new Steven King novel, Under the Dome, which the library just sent. Things are heating up in this corrupt Maine town trapped under a mysterious force field. And there is that Occupy Orlando march going on downtown. Regardless of what you think of them (I’m certainly not a fan of corporate turdworms), it would be an easy bike ride to get […]

October 16, 2011

The joys of writing

So this weekend, I had a long slow cold, one that came up on Friday as a fevered flush with minor diarrhea. Normally it would be nothing to worry about unless you were one of the Carthaginian host crossing the Alps in the dead of winter, where if you sank along the side of the muddy trail, you’d be left to die. Or, if you were at work with only a bike. Got home okay, but it was a long ride, and my head pounded through ever pedalstroke. Yet writers have duties. I had to scroll through the latest Kindle […]

October 22, 2011

Compasion and fairness

Hit the ground the other day, going home. My fault, really. Got myself into a tight spot that I can usually avoid – for this one stretch I usually keep to the sidewalk – the road is narrow and there is a barrier down the right. Anyway, decided to stick to the street and when traffic backed at the light, I cut to the right between the cars and barrier. Then I remembered the the lip between the asphalt’s undersurface and final coat, a half-inch step that I slid down. Humming down this tight space, I realized that the lip […]

October 23, 2011

The Three Musketeers (Review)

The classic measure to the Musketeer movie is, of course, the 1973 version with Michael York, Oliver Reed, Raquel Welch, etc. That one gets 10 for 10 for following the storyline, great casting, great pacing, and wonderfully choreographed sword-play. Since then, there have been several excretable versions of this classic tale, most of them having nothing to do with the original. The Three Musketeers (2011) is not a bad little version. I wouldn’t want to see it with literate friends but it’s fun enough. Its a rather steampunky affair (the 1973 version had a spring dagger in the hilt of […]

October 26, 2011

OpsLog – LM&O – 10/26/2011

The reason we run trains is to escape reality. Even though we often push weathered cuts of cars into rusty sidings flanked by shabby industrial buildings, even if the era is the great and deep depression, there is an escapism to operations. I hate when reality follows us into our make-believe world. The recession is hitting the club hard. People have been forced into crummy jobs, night work and such. Others are having to extend services of their businesses to stay afloat. And those with 9-5 jobs are so burned out by the stress of keeping them that they often […]

October 26, 2011

Beetle bugs

I love beetles. The first of the three cars I’ve ever owned was a yellow 73 superbeetle I took to the ends of the Earth (well, Irvine California, but I did the transcon in three days). So now I’ve got a 2000 New Beetle (again, yellow with distinctive bug-about-town bee’s knees). And the love, alas, is fading. I understand that a car 11 years old is going to have problems. But there seems to be this airbag issue (due to a harness under the drivers seat). If you get the light, it’s a grand right out of your pocket. I’ve […]

October 29, 2011

The Future

Saw the future today. Wow! Was over at my buddy Steve’s house today, doing a little work on the traveling layout and then getting another test run in on the SP&K. It’s a cool two-deck layout with a lower staging area, a twin helix (up and down) and then and over and back run – basically a great big dogbone (with a section of single track). But the thing is, he’s automated it. We’d run an early practice session a while back (HERE) and found a number of problems with how things worked, all which Steve addressed. For example, instead […]

October 30, 2011

Beholder

The world is full of ugly things. Ugly buildings. Ugly people. Ugly streets. Ugly cars. But if you look close, sometimes you can see beauty. I think the most beautiful thing on a bike is the chain system that works the rear-hub gearing. As intricate and unlikely as a wasp’s wing or the human knee, it clicks and clatters through the ride. In the morning, it’s the first sound I make on the street, the crisp chick-chick of the gearing as my speed climbs and I go into that first curve. Like a formula one race driver, I have most […]

November 2, 2011

Off to Tehachapi

I’ll be flying to San Diego to operate on La Mesa’s massive Tehachapi railroad layout this weekend with five club-members. How massive are we talking? It’s 25 scale miles long. A mile is 60’ 8”, so that’s 1516 feet long. If you ran a train 60 mph along it, it would take 25 minutes to get from Mojave to Bakersfield. As track speed is about 25 mph, it will take a first class train an hour to complete a run. One time it took me six hours to move a set of cab-forward helpers (running as extras) down the hill […]