Blog – Page 235 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

July 24, 2025

Unicorns and Rainbows (DOG EAR)

mid the rolling green hills with their scattering of humans, the vast giants meet in council. So the setup here is my model train club (Orlando N-Trak, or ONT). We’ve been doing this all my adult life, since 1987. I’ve helped build it, I help run it, I help promote it. And tonight, I had to set up the waybills so engineers know where their freight cars are going. With six mainline freights and seven local trains, we’re moving something like fifty to seventy cars. We need to doublecheck to ensure they all start where they are papered to start, […]

July 24, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O – 7/23/2025

ell, that was satisfying. We got out a solid session last night. Everyone knew what to do to set up. Pre-brief was quick. The clock started and (I’m happy to say) we didn’t get a single LNER (not an English railroad company but a line error on the clock when the system shorts hard). Outside of one helix delay, everything ran fairly smooth. I don’t know about you lugs, but I had a pretty enjoyable time. A couple of real notable events. I didn’t get ANY calls for help to the dispatcher over the radio. Crews really did “work it […]

July 27, 2025

Hammer’s Slammers (Review)

his is one of the classics from the year I left high school, a watermark novel about a futuristic mercenary tank group, their armor no longer obtainable as economies falter (but the need for them growing, for the same reason). So the Slammers move from planet to planet, signing contracts and squishing rebels, militias, and other poorly-armed rabble. The thing is, Drake really did a good job charting out what futuristic combat might turn into (and it’s borne fruit in the half-century since this book’s release). These massive hovertanks are monitored and guided from orbit, swatting down artillery shells with […]

July 28, 2025

OpsLog – FEC – 7/26/2025

ne of my favorite runs – the Florida East Coast. And funny anecdote – I’d been dispatching so much recently (twice this week already) that when I wrote Ken and asked if maybe I could just run trains this time, he quickly agreed, making me double-think it. Was I not that good? Did I do something wrong last time? Why doesn’t he beg me to run the panel? Turns out he wanted to run a more intimate session (not with candles and romantic music and a valentine chocolate box, no, but with only five engineers in the room. He’d generated […]

July 28, 2025

OpsLog – WAZU – 7/27/2025

ne of the rockier sessions on the WAZU, still mostly on time but with rage and thunder to get us there. I still had fun, as did most of the other operators. Andy always puts on a good show and great lunch – I eat better than at home. I had the dispatcher’s seat (third time in a week) and the session started out well. Trains were rolling on their times and making their stops. Andy’s new system of posted turnout IDs made it easy to get the remote trains across the line (still, I was only diverging them when […]

July 31, 2025

Hot Button (DOG EAR)

y dad was an only child with older parents, and I think that might have caused his anger issues. Limited social interactions, you know? So, to me, my dad was a gruff Navy captain. We got along well enough – we both loved trains. But no, you didn’t want to get him angry. He’d go volcanic. So that’s my excuse (which really isn’t an excuse) – learned behavior. My anger has cost me three jobs in the past. Someone in authority would order up a big plate of stupid. We’d argue. I’d lose my temper. And there’s the door. As […]

August 3, 2025

OpsLog – TBL – 8/2/2025

nlike the last ops session I was at (which was, to no fault of the host, like a fight with cavalry lances in a shit house at midnight), the more compact, less attended session on the diminutive Tuscarora Branch Line was quite a success. I’d been planning on doing a test-run session since May (when we shut down the line to work on the river, almost done yet inexplicably not included in the accompanying photographs). Now that the river is mostly finished and looking somewhat better than plywood, we finally got a chance to use the layout in the way […]

August 3, 2025

Enemy Mine (Review)

friend ranted about this story-set so much he did the ultimate – he ordered a copy of The Enemy Papers, a collection of Barry B. Longyear’s scifi works. Inside is a loose trilogy of Earth (and really, the US) fighting the evil reptilian Dracs. Enemy Mine is the first of the set, and I’ll say this: my friend was right. Okay, a note on the title. “Enemy Mine” does not refer to (as I thought) either an explosive anti-ship bump-n-bang weapon nor a mineral shaft. No, it means “My enemy” in a sort of archaic wording. And well that it should. So […]

August 3, 2025

On Sheet – Chatterboxes

fter a hiatus, I’m back. I won’t be regular or kind (hey, that’s the mark of being old, right?). But I will use this for my soap box on model trains and their operations. So, a lot of you think running toy trains is fun (regardless of the fact that we call it “Operations” and say it with a clenched jaw). And fine, if you like snapping together unitrak into a double loop with the requisite double-crossover, go right ahead. No police force is going to break into your hobby room and carry you off (not quite yet). It’s your […]

August 7, 2025

True Closure (DOG EAR)

e was a good friend. We knew each other for decades. But in the final few years of our friendship, he got… difficult. He’d call and talk AT me for hours. In person, he was loud. At restaurants, he’d talk politics in a booming voice, gathering angry stares. It got to where I’d flinch when I saw his name pop up on my phone — there would go another hour. A friend and I tried to stage an intervention but he turned us down – he had other little things to do. And then at a mutual event where I was supposed […]