Blog

January 16, 2022

Undertow (Review)

kay, this is going to be a terrible review. No, it would be unfair to say that the book I’m reviewing, Undertow, was terrible. Actually it was okay, even good. No, it just took me forever to get to writing this review. Months. I’m going to do my best here, typing with one hand and flipping through the book in the other. So André Deschênes is an assassin located on the oceanic colony world with its floating city, Novo Haven.There is a nasty corporation running things (you ever notice that there are never evil mom ‘n pop stores?). Anyway, there […]
January 20, 2022

The world before social media (DOG EAR)

was sitting around the model train club the other day, paging through old issues of Model Railroader. I mean old, old issues, like from the late forties and early fifties. So funny and quaint to look back from a time of computer chips and 3D printing at a world of ozone-emitting electronics and block control. But what really struck me was the letters from readers. Each of them, at the end, included an address. I’m wondering how often someone might say something a person agreed or disagreed with and might have prompted a return letter or two from the readers. […]
January 23, 2022

Leviathan Falls (Review)

inally, it’s over. This final chapter from the series known as The Expanse on streaming comes at the end of a long road for us fans. We followed the series from the inception, when James Holden and his mismatched crew had the Canterbury shot out from under them. After taking a Martian frigate (or gunboat, or whatever) from a doomed Martian battleship and renaming it the Rocinante (a ship as much loved as the Millennium Falcon by fans), the crew begin working on a thread of causality involving a blob of alien goo shot at our system and captured as […]
January 23, 2022

OpsLog – TBL – 01/22/2022

nother running of the tiny but busy Tuscarora Branch Line, this time with my co-creator Greg and my friends Brian and Tyler. Not many improvements for it – the new ridge top is in and I’ve painstakingly painted up the Tuscarora downtown structures in Z-scale. Funny thing – Greg (as the coal engineer) is a little pissed that the ridge prevents him from seeing his operations around the Easton power plant. Of course, I point out that now he has to rely on the dispatcher to serve as his brakeman, calling his distances back – “Two cars. One car. Half. […]
January 27, 2022

OpsLog – LM&O – 1/26/2022

t was touch and go whether we’d get enough crew for a session but right before 7:30, the roster filled out. Some us took early trains, some of us had to wait for later trains, and some of us sat and chatted. And from the central table, many an amusing story was recounted. I picked one right off the bat – I’d given a buddy my Zanesville Turn but did the next best, a shakedown run of an express parts train from Mingo Interchange to the LeVasseur Plant. Brought over the cars, pushed them (racks and then long boxes) in […]
January 27, 2022

Sense of Place (DOG EAR)

ne important element of storytelling is a sense of place. If you feel that you know a location that the story is taking place in, if it feels real and connected to the rest of the world, the story “grounds” its foundation. And while this can work in literature, it’s very important in more visual media. We just stated watching Goliath, a tale about a lawyer who drinks too much and has fallen on hard times. Taking place in LA, the lawyer lives on the second story of a sea-side motel. Right next door is a bar. Ranging around outside […]
January 30, 2022

OpsLog – TY&E – 1/29/2022

n Bob Martin’s long-lost N&W line, there was one train that was mine. I’d dispatch all the way through the session (yeah, that seat was mine, too) but the last train, the long, long, overlong coal train was mine. I’d run it slow and easy, mindful of just how it bunched down through Irvine, easing it into the yard. Then I’d roll out, picking up speed on the long straight track along the back wall, making up time and hearing those little wheels clickity-clack. My train. Hands off. Same thing on the TY&E. The sand and lumber train runs up […]
January 30, 2022

A Savage War of Peace (Review)

s you’ll recall, in the original book of this Ark Royal spin-off, Warspite, the crew of this experimental cruiser found a planet Vesy, which Russian defectors (who’d fled the initial crushing battle against the then enemy race, the Tadpoles, had settled on). Using it as a pirate base, they’ve been raiding shipping for supplies (and women) and slowly corrupting the indigenous people. Things heat up in this book, sub-titled as Warspite II. The indigenous race on Vesy live in small city states. Everything is about war, about knocking off rival cities and forming your own little empire. So since it’s […]
February 3, 2022

Scythe (DOG EAR)

ince I’m retired but ordered off the beloved bike because of medical reasons, I’ve taken to walking. I can venture out two miles from the house (giving me a comfortable range of operations). Given that most shops are a mile or less away, it’s pretty handy as well as a utilitarian way to combine exercises and errands. So I needed a scythe. The weeds at the club are getting long and I need a way to mow them down (the grass, of course, is inert in winter). Walked over to the hardware store and bought the tool, then hooked it […]
February 6, 2022

A Small Colonial War (Review)

o you’ll remember how in A Savage War of Peace, the Nation of India grabbed up the world of Vesy and forced the Great Powers out. Well, this book involves the second part of their plans. Moving their fleet (and two carriers quickly), they seize two British colonies and stall on the diplomatic front. Yes, where Warspite II mimicked the English conquest of India, Warpspite III is the Falklands War. The Warspite joins the force to take back one of the two colonies, it being thought that a short and decisive naval battle will end this thing. But the Indians […]