Blog – Page 180 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

June 26, 2022

OpsLog – WVN – 6/26/2022

o be honest, I feel a little like one of those people who are reading Time Magazine at 30,000 feet, rationing my peanuts and trying to ignore the loudmouth in the seat next to me. The next moment, I’m waking up in a muddy field surrounded by wreckage, still strapped to my smoldering seat. First thought: what just happened? The first shift on the Komars’ West Virginia Northern went really well – the railroad was clicking through its paces and we actually finished up a little early, allowing us time to prep up for the post lunch & meridian shift. […]

July 1, 2022

On Sheet – Keeping tabs on things

o some of you might be actually rolling dice for destinations and thinking that there has got to be another way (especially when that die knocks over scenery or bounces under the layout). A step up from rolling dem bones (and below developing a full-fledged waybill system) is the tab-on-car system. It works just like it sounds. You need to go to the local hobby shop and get some styrene strips (Evergreen makes them). Look for the stuff that has a cross-cut like a bracket like this – [ – Take it home and cut it into small square pieces. […]

July 3, 2022

Death’s End (Review)

nd this is the third book in the series that started with The Three-Body Problem and ramped up in The Dark Forest. It’s a look at humans, our planet and our place in the sprawling galaxy. Older characters have pretty much faded away and the story focus on Cheng Xin, a thoughtful young rocket engineer who ends up getting caught up in events she is forced (and sometimes unqualified) to face. She is the one, upon finding out that a passing college acquaintance gifted her an actual star (not the name of the star, no, but the entire thing, planets […]

July 14, 2022

Media chicken soup (DOG EAR)

any of you know that I went through some complex and very invasive surgery over the last week. I’m now at home, getting settled in the new way of things. My belly has six itching incisions and there are all sorts of new changes in my life. While I can limp through my walks, fly my drone in the back and read, sometimes I just don’t want to do anything. And that’s precisely what TV is good for. Yes, it’s numbed the minds of generations of Americans until they’ve lost the ability of critical thought. But it is great to […]

July 15, 2022

On Sheet – The Right Car for the Right Job

orry I was out – I was recovering from surgery (and no, it wasn’t brain removal). Anyway, last time we talked about using tabs-on-cars as a method of getting a car to a specific industry. This time, let’s make it even simpler – let’s assume that we’ll just switch by car type alone and not worry about reading those teeny tiny numbers or placing tabs on our roofwalks. Most model railroads do this in one shape or form. For example, if you go to a layout with a coal mine, you probably will just shove all the hoppers under the […]

July 17, 2022

The Longest Day (Review)

his book got me through a very confusing and disturbing day at the hospital. And for that I’m grateful; both the for companionship and that it was really quite good. It’s book 10 of the Ark Royal series and for this one, we leave the idea of the three-book set (which author Christopher Nuttall did for Ark Royal, Warspite and Vanguard) and focus on the Battle of Earth (which resulted in multiple KEW hits on Earth and the flooding of much of our low-lying coastal cities). England was particularly hard hit and one of the Ark Royal characters had a […]

July 21, 2022

Droning on (DOG EAR)

inda an observation on media thing today. During my surgery recovery, I’ve taken to playing with my new drone (well, disclosure, my second new drone. The first wild-blue-yondered on me). Anyway, its a Snaptain SP350, and no, no camera. It’s more of a tiny RC plane you can fly around your back yard (except, unlike a plane, you can hover and do all sorts of wacky things with it). If you are looking for a good drone for under $40, this one is your best choice. Flies out of the box. But it’s made me more aware of drones. Sure, […]

July 23, 2022

On Sheet – On Sheet? What?

few days ago someone asked me why I call this blog “On Sheet” in the first place. Fair question. Let’s take a break from ways to get our tiny boxcars to our tiny industries and chat about how railroads work. Or worked, as in past tense. You might have a small station on your railroad, one with a bay window and a semaphore signal out front. You might have assumed that that signal is to make trains stop and go. So did I until I bumped into Steve King and he got me into the religion of Time Table and […]

July 24, 2022

OpsLog – FEC – 7/23/2022

ot to moan about it too much, but I’ve only had surgery less than two weeks before this session. I’d seen the crew call for the Farnham’s FEC session and originally bowed out. After all, I didn’t want to collapse into a puddle of blood and other fluids in their train room. But a few days shy of the session, I girded my loins (still a bit painful), wrote them and asked if it wasn’t too late to come out (pre-surgery walking seems to have aided my recovery – that and wanting to run trains). The wife and I got […]

July 24, 2022

Watching God (Review)

ey, I’m a long-term China Mieville fan. He writes wonderfully and while I don’t often understand everything that is being conveyed to me, it’s usually a treat. Found his name on a collection of short stories titled Out of the Ruins. Possibly I should have peeked at the story he’d contributed to the collection because now, in retrospect, I think I’ve got it elsewhere in my stacks. Anyway, the tale is titled Watching God. It’s a great piece, if not (as usual) a bit esoteric for a guy like me. So in this story, there is a community of people […]