Blog – Page 221 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

July 25, 2024

OpsLog – LM&O – 7/24/2024

a-ha, you fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous of which is “never get involved in a land war in Asia”, but only slightly less well-known is this: “Never dispatch a high-speed rail line using train sheets when death is on the line!” Or something like that. So I made the second blunder. You see, a train sheet (as shown below) is like a blank timetable. The dispatcher writes times as trains pass point, draws arrows to where they are cleared to. Also, and this is me, I’ll circle my meet points so I […]

July 28, 2024

OpsLog – FEC – 7/27/2024

kay, this one will be a tough one to write. Sure, the first train out got routed wrong out of the yard. There, are you happy? I admit it. To make it worse, the last train in also misrouted down the wrong track and hit a train on the departure tracks. So full disclosure. But while we’re spreading blame on toast, let’s not forget that every local, every local, worked long today. I had delays at Palm bay, at Pinetta, Buenaventura, Frontenac, Titusville and the whole Cocoa stretch. If locals worked clear of the main, they did fine. But work […]

July 28, 2024

A Closed and Common Orbit (Review)

his is a very loose followup to A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, Becky Chamber’s breakout novel. I was very surprised to see the direction she took this – rather than stay with the ship Wayfarer and the interesting characters she’d developed, she went a totally different and interesting direction – centering on Pepper (the mech they brushed up against earlier in the story) and the newly rebooted (i.e. personality-dead) ship’s AI who needed to be removed from the ship. I was like where are we going with this? With a touch of but I liked the old […]

August 1, 2024

Two Cafes (DOG EAR)

o I’m sitting in the Banner Elk cafe, having my brew at 4200 feet. Interesting. My home cafe in Florida (Framework, on 17-92) is my place. The black joe is strong (need water as a chaser) and the grinding in the back makes me sneeze sometimes, but that’s okay. It’s a younger clientele, a bunch of middle-twenties/early-thirties people, most of them using the cafe as an office (sitting at laptops, a cold cup of coffee untouced at their side). There is always some homeless guy there (they change out every two weeks or so) but they generally behave and a […]

August 4, 2024

Destroyermen 11: Blood in the Water (Review)

kay, we’ll start with the question I always ask at the end of Destroyermen reviews – where do the reptilian Grik get all their shit? The bad guys in the story (and the author) have been hinting that the Grik (and the crazy Japanese emperor-wannabe, Kurokawa) had a big surprise for the heroes off the east coast of Africa. And (spoilers ahead) did they ever – hundreds of planes. Three carriers. Working torpedoes. Where did they get all this shit? The thing that always makes me wince in these books is the fact that they don’t have railroads. Materials seem […]

August 8, 2024

Drift Away (DOG EAR)

n the early 70s, a singer named Dobie Gray released a song, Drift Away, that was a big hit. I remember being into it, playing the 45 over and over. In a nutshell, it’s a song that notes the way music can sooth us in our troubled world. You can say that it’s a noble ideal to hold, something that can bring comfort to us all. [Verse 1] Day after day I’m more confused Yet I look for the light through the pouring rain You know that’s a game that I hate to lose And I’m feelin’ the strain […]

August 11, 2024

Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City (Review)

o image there is a “Roman” sort of empire, with a huge city and a privileged founding race (literally blue-skinned), an empire that spans most of the known world. Imagine you are a white-skinned “barbarian” who has elevated himself to a position of commanding a regiment of engineers – and hey, you like just building bridges. You also are a smart-ass and a realist with a touch of mild Tourettes. And then your content life of engineering and problem-solving is upset when you realize that a massive army has been moving around inside the borders of this empire. It has […]

August 18, 2024

If Cats Disappeared From The World (Review)

his short little Japanese novel starts with a down-on-his-luck postman shuffling through a useless life, that is, until his doctor tells him he’s got a tumor and only weeks, maybe, to live. That would be a lot to take in. Whats more to take is the next day, when the devil appears and makes an offer – if this doomed man agrees to it, the devil will remove one thing from our world. For each removed thing, the man gains a day. Okay, so the first thing is cell phones to which the man agrees. The next day on the […]

August 18, 2024

OpsLog – West Fork – 8/17/2024

ome of you are probably sitting up at this – where is Robert operating now? Tampa? Miami? Atlanta? Nome? Nope, right down at our own Orlando N-Trak Clubhouse. West Fork is the little switching layout Steve and I (mostly Steve) assembled. It runs on batteries (seemingly forever) and is interesting. Essentially you have a lead that can hold an engine and three cars. The main can hold five. The two sidings, three apiece. You’ve got eight cars to shuffle and need to get five (in the right order) on the main. Index switching? How long could this possibly take? Well, […]

August 19, 2024

OpsLog – Tusk Coast – 8/18/2024

ub leverman Zeus H had a dream job for a young man about to enroll in Miami Dade College; midnight shift working the levers on Atlantic Coast Line’s Tusk Coast Interlocking Tower. But then a miscommunication between him and Station Operator Kyle put the West Drill out on the main, with rights over all trains, moments before Extra 5001 – the first section of three lugging pea-grade down from the scattered Westly tipples – rang the inbound announciator. The Drill’s cars were scattered over the Tenmile Creek trestle in mid-classificaiton, under rights of seniority granted by his office. Zeus looked […]