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November 20, 2022

Dead Iron (Review)

o this one is a steampunk western. With magic. It’s even got an airship in there. Did we leave any genres out? And I love the tag line on the book  “America was built on blood, sweet, and gears.” Very cute. So our hero protagonist in this thing is a loner-drifter guy up in the NorthWest in the 1870s or so with a bit of a backstory. You see, Cedar Hunt is a werewolf. And it’s that high-moon-riding time of the month. A boy has gone missing and Cedar wants to find him. The problem is, he’s got to find […]
November 24, 2022

OpsLog – LM&O – 11/23/2022

ven though we had ops last week (look it up – it’s still on the sidebar) we decided to have a pre-Thanksgiving session, the Turkey Trot. Generally, attendance is light so we run something simple – in this case, Time Table and Train Order (the old fashion way). And even with limited staff, we ran (1) four scheduled freights, (2) four scheduled passenger trains, (3) two ore trains, (4) two limestone hauls and (5) SEVEN coal trains! So yes, we probably ran more trains in this session then we do in a normal session. It was great fun, and since […]
November 24, 2022

Milk Carton Moment on Carnival Row (DOG EAR)

poilers spoilers spoilers! Spoilers for Carnival Row. For those who don’t know it, Carnival Row is an interesting show on Prime. It tells the tale of a fantasy world where an “English” nation, and specifically a steam-punky “London”, is pressed with a wave of immigration, specifically fairies and satyrs and the like. In the story, it turns out (last call for spoilers!) Piety Breakspear – the wife of the liberal chancellor – has been practicing necromancy (grafting dead things together and bringing them to life of sorts). The hero – Philo Philostrate – gets chased into her lair (under the […]
November 25, 2022

On Sheet – Thanksgiving

had a blog all ready to roll. It had to do with how people at clubs can be difficult, and talked about a recent fissure we suffered. There is also a club in town where a member got pissed, came back in with his key and tore out all the bridges he’d built. Yes, it was a nice angry blog about leaving with dignity (and not letting the door hit you in the ass). But then we had a scratch ops session at the club Thanksgiving Eve. Normally the guys like running under warrants. Track warrants tell you what to […]
November 27, 2022

Nine Princes in Amber (Review)

icked this one from the best stocked used bookstore I know, my favorites shelf in my Florida Room. This was one of Roger Zelazny’s best, written all the way back in 1970 (while I was a tiny creature). I picked it up sometime in the early eighties, reading it in college and loving every page. So it’s been forty years and there I am looking for a book and there is my five volume set. And the book series, it really holds up. Written in that era when Fantasy was in the wake of the Lord of the Rings, when […]
December 1, 2022

Book of Love (DOG EAR)

o instead of one of my dystopian movies, one recent Friday night I selected one I thought JB would like, Book of Love, an Amazon flick from 2022. Well, she liked it. I was amused by it, but the more I thought about it, the madder I got. So, the plot is this: Henry Copper is a very nebbish author who has spent five years on a novel that nobody likes. He wrote it from his own heart, his cold suffering lonely heart, reaching out to those like him. It is a book about chaste and unfulfilled love. The book […]
December 2, 2022

On Sheet – Quiet Time

recently mentioned the comradery one can get from model railroading (and, specifically, operations). Well, the reverse can be true too. The other night was club night. Got to the dinner joint at 5pm. Talked with the guys and our waitress (our favorite) for an hour or so. Of course, there would be a board meeting for the club after the meal and being secretary, I was there with my computer. Our president (of course, the last guy to show) came in at 6:30 or so. And we talked over our end-of-year financials and congratulated ourselves on our efforts. We brought […]
December 4, 2022

The Right of the Line (Review)

think I always say this, but “Another book of the Ark Royal series…” Yes, this is the fourteenth of the series that started for me in a used bookstore in Norfolk, Va and ended up on my straining bookshelf. For those of you who don’t religiously (because I post these every Sunday?) reviews, the Ark Royal series follows a cast of evolving (and perishing) characters through a near space-n-time setting, that being the English Navy two or so centuries hence. We’ve fought several alien races so far, and nearly gotten squashed, but this time we are facing Earth’s biggest threat – a […]
December 5, 2022

OpsLog – WBRR – 12/3/2022

hings on the Western Bay railroad get better and better. We had a new dispatcher today  – he wasn’t all that versed in TT&TO (but who is – I’m giving a clinic at a convention next month on the topic). But he rolled with the punches and did very well. Three of us operated seven stations – I gotta get Al to let us start issuing train orders someday (I’ve got some ideas – also mentioned in my clinic). But otherwise the crews made their meets and switched their cars. The superintendent doesn’t trust them one bit but they are […]
December 5, 2022

OpsLog – FEC – 12/4/2022

he second day of my all-ops weekend played out even better than I could have hoped for. The drive was easy, traffic light. We met a couple of club members at Wendy’s before the session, to chat about the coming effort (one of the members for a newbie, so that helped him (or filled him with horrifying regrets)). And then we went over, met the rest of the bunch and filed out to the two sheds to get things rolling. Kyle was on the panel and I had light road duties, meaning with one train, I stripped out every car […]