Blog – Page 206 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

November 3, 2023

On Sheet – Sailboats

as out with a person I know the other day. He was going on and on about his RC sailboat club. Now, I remember when they’d have a half-dozen or more hulls in the local lake on Sundays, even more. But their members have been dying or moving away. So now there are two people (sometimes) or just him (more often or not). One thing is for sure – if you are the only boat out there, yes, you win a lot of regattas. I listened to about fifteen minutes of carping about this and finally noted that I’m a […]

November 5, 2023

Gordon Sinclair’s Khyber Caravan (Review)

nother find in a local curbside, a book republished in 1975 (from it’s original back in ’35) about a popular Canadian travel & adventure writer who traveled to and around India. Specifically, he made his way (by car) (with a lot of spare tires) up to Northern India and the Khyber Pass. Look, I’ve done Central/North India too, but that was with a travel guide and a lot of shepherding. This guy just took off in his car with a driver and guide, not knowing where he’d end each day. To me, India was a strange and wonderful place, but […]

November 9, 2023

Out of the Box (DOG EAR)

was starting to gear up to assemble the winter issue of The Journal Box. This is a model train newsletter for the local region of the National Model Railroad Association. Years back, a friend of mine needed an editor (the entire publication had fallen off the face of the earth). So I agreed to step in and do it, even though I didn’t know anything about Microsoft Publisher. Slowly learned it and started assembling these quarterly, adding a bit of a whimsical touch and some jokes here and there as I filled the pages with layouts, news, and coverage of […]

November 11, 2023

On Sheet – Sampler Platter

art of the operations game is getting to the point where the layout you operate on is burned into your brain. You know all the switching tricks. You know the how the line is dispatched and know what your authority to proceed is. Everything makes perfect sense. Everything is logical. And with this, I’ve actually known people who have learned our club system but will not go into another layout cold. Worse, they might tell the host that they’d like to “come and watch”. (No host wants this – aisle space is always limited, and we don’t need a lump […]

November 11, 2023

OpsLog – Tusk Hill – 11/10/2023

o in management positions on the Midland’s railroad we call Tusk Hill, we had Oxford graduates acting in all the positions governing train movements – controller (dispatcher) and leverman. That would be myself and Kyle. We were focused and studious in our efforts to keep trains moving. And in the “Morlock” positions (as we call them), the engine drivers, we had Greg, Jim M and Pete. They were boisterous, rowdy and common as dirt. So what a session this mix made for. Management wanted to see if Tusk Hill could actually run following solid rules – official communications and token […]

November 12, 2023

The Gates of Heaven (Review)

n interesting book off the local used shelf, a scifi from 1980 (Jeeze, forty-three years ago). So the L5 colony is trying to break away from Earth domination and they figure if they can capture an asteroid and mine it themselves, they can be independent. Using a combination of clever misdirection and sling-shotting, they manage to get their rock and head home, but in the final turn around Jupiter, they go slinging into space, flying right into an uncharted black hole and that’s that. Or so we think. A number of years later, an astronomical listening post happens to be […]

November 12, 2023

OpsLog – WVN – 11/11/2023

on a golden ticket to run over on the Komar’s wonderful West Virginia Northern. Unfortunately, the night before the session I got a call from my rider – he was running a fever. A quick call to the Komars resulted in his ticket getting revoked and me facing the long solo drive to Tampa in my old aging beater. I mentioned that, if we were short, I could bring my wife instead. They thought they kinda said “Yes”, I thought they said “No” (after all, she is literally a frog in my pocket in ops, not adding to head-count). So […]

November 12, 2023

OpsLog – TY&E – 11/12/2023

reat session on the TY&E today (even though some of you are hazy on what the word “today” means, since you agreed to be at the session “today”. Whatever). So we were a little short-handed and had to work around the labor pool shortage. In that, I was bumped off my backwater sand and gravel train and ended up running some freights between Youngstown and Tipton (on the high deck, here angels go and I never have). So it was a new experience for me. But it was fine – while I didn’t get in all the switching I usually […]

November 19, 2023

OpsLog – FEC – 11/18/2023

t was Donald Sutherland who created the character of the World War Two proto-hippy “Oddball”, who smiles when presenting the coffee-swilling, hookah-puffing, woman-fondling tankers of his command with a dopey yet prideful smile. “These are my boys.” Today, me and some of the N-Trakers ran east to the coast to operate on the Farnham’s FEC. We entered their house in a blaze of gold, thanks to John’s club shirt. The guys (John DeVasto, Zach Bischoff and Jeff Chisholm) as well as myself and my wife, we took our jobs, sat down and did the shit out of them. I’ve run […]

November 19, 2023

The Hero of Ages (Review)

crossed the finish line! Done. If there’s one thing you can say about Brandon Sanderson’s The Hero of Ages (the third book of the Mistborn) series, is that it’s big. 556 pages big. I’ve been hauling that brick around for a week. But in books, size doesn’t really matter if the book is good. For example, I only wish that Cloud Cuckoo Land had been bigger. But I’m not sure (speaking frankly) that Sanderson used his pages wisely. The story pacing across this thing felt… off. First off, characters tended to moan and complain about their personal problems through this […]