Blog – Page 186 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

November 4, 2022

On Sheet – Don’t sweat the small stuff

ou’ll probably remember how I gas-bagged about facing point locks in previous On-Sheets. These are the blue levers in an interlocking tower that lock a turnout’s points so they don’t shift while a train passes over them. It’s really cool while working a shift in the Tuscarora tower to drop the lock, throw the turnout, and relock it. In towers, I read how when the lever is pushed back from the operator (standard position), signals are red and turnouts normalized. A lever pulled towards the operator turns a signal green or reverses a turnout. Given this, I naturally assumed that […]

November 5, 2022

OpsLog – P&WV – 11/4/2022

kay, so we got to run on the Pittsburgh and West Virginia today, a sort of retirees session held in the middle of a Friday when all the good people of the world are working hard (at the car wash or other places of employment). The good thing here was that, unlike our last disappointing session when over half those signing up didn’t bother to show (and our plucky dispatcher found himself in the cab, running trains and watching for headlights), we had a full crew. One guy couldn’t make it but luckily called host Tom Wilson in time for […]

November 6, 2022

OpsLog – FEC – 11/5/2022

uite a crazy day (and night) on the Florida East Coast. Worst bit – in mid-session in the yard shed, there was a turntable fire which filled the room with fumes and knocked out the table. The table itself, normally able to be lifted off, seems welded in place. That really sucks – I’ve run the hostler job and really like the table. Out in the main room, there were the usual issues, including a train getting stuck in the runnel and one operator determined to run through all our defect cards (and that would be Kyle, who scored three […]

November 6, 2022

Para Bellum (Review)

have to say this, but if you are an Ark Royal series fan and have not read this book yet (the 13th in the series), well, SPOILERS AHEAD. So we discovered in the last book that a virus has corrupted at least three races and is eager to add more to its fold. That generation ship that came into human space and was allowed to land on a colony world was lousy with viruses.Yes, we think it was contained but there are some freighters that called on the world are missing. And now HMS Invincible has been assigned a small […]

November 10, 2022

Word of Mouth (DOG EAR)

aybe this is one of the reasons the world is so fucked up. Oral histories. And their demise. It used to be, well before the 1920s, that people would get their opinions and world views from two places; books and word of mouth. If they knew anything about, say, World War One, they’d either read it (such as All Quiet on the Western Front) or directly hear it (possibly from Uncle Frank, who’d served with the American Expeditionary Force). They would get their insights either from an author (backed by his editor and publisher) or an uncle. Stories and accounts […]

November 11, 2022

On Sheet – On the subject of sheets

n most model railroads, dispatchers usually uses a magnetic board to move trains. Sure, you’ve seen them – a map of the railroad (usually made with thin tape on a metal shelf) where little magnets with train symbols on them are moved about to show the location (or limit of authority) of a train. I’ve even written an Excel sheet that does just that, allowing the user to double click on a train and then double click on the desired location of a train. It works better since it shows EVERY location of the train, not just the start and […]

November 13, 2022

The Classic Railway Signal Tower (Review)

od, I wish I’d had this book before programming TUSK tower, my computer-driven interlocking tower on my Tuscarora Branch Line railroad. More on that in a bit. So, Interlocking Towers are those control-tower-looking-structures you used to see along railroad lines. They came about because sending crews scrambling about in the middle of the night, in the rain, to align a route for the express sometimes ended up with hard feelings and smoldering causalities. Interlocking Towers were the computers of their era (from the 1880s to the 1960s). The operator, standing in his high perch, would use long levers to set […]

November 17, 2022

OpsLog – LM&O – 11/16/2022

his photo pretty much says it all about the session. This is one of those chilling photos where you are able to see a lot of people right before they die. In this, 223 was coming downgrade, going into a siding that was both counter to his warrant and the rulebook, and detonated against Silver Bullet 2. Oh, the humanity. So many dead. Of course, I just pointed to the warrant that specifically told 223 to take the main. Regrettable about all those dead women and children, but we all know who was driving that train. And at fault. Seriously, […]

November 17, 2022

Word In Edgewise (DOG EAR)

‘ve got three people in my life who really know how to talk. Sometimes I’ll call them for a quick word. A question. Or just to check on on them. Sometimes they call me (usually when I’m playing a game or watching something on TV, sigh). Regardless, once the get their verbal boilers up to pressure, they are full steam ahead, no stopping them. And no getting a word in edgewise. One guy, when he tells a story, fills in every unneeded detail. And in the middle of what he and I both know is tedious exposition, he’ll even say […]

November 18, 2022

On Sheet – Running Trains

o, I’m a model railroader. I must run a lot of trains, right? Especially now that I’m retired. Let’s see – on Monday through Thursday, I worked on the Journal Box newsletter for the NMRA (specifically, the Sunshine Region, where I am a member). This is a quarterly publication which I do gratis. Mostly, it’s just a lot of editing work. Monday night was also maintenance night at the club. We installed the new chip in Tuscarora and identified a mistake in the interlocking code. Also, I worked on an MOW siding, changed light bulbs and bagged up the trash. […]