Blog – Page 242 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

January 25, 2026

The Last Enemy (Review)

he Last Enemy is the third book in The Enemy Papers trilogy. You’ll remember that I reviewed the first two, Enemy Mine and The Tomorrow Testament down those links. The entire body of work forms the Human-Drak war. And by the end of the second book, we learn that another alien race (smaller and sneakier) set us up on a collision course for the major powerhouses on the planet Amadeen. There, like the West Bank and Northern Ireland, the war has become splinted and hateful, with groups fighting in the memories of old atrocities. It is so hopeless that thirty years ago […]

January 25, 2026

OpsLog – LM&O – 1/24/2026

ead Actor (glancing through the curtain at a packed hall): “This will be the greatest production of Romeo & Juliet the stage has ever seen!” House manager: “Your lead actress called in sick and there is no understudy.” Lead Actor: “Gack!” So this Saturday Night Special, we had a lot of pre-signups. I was in the back getting the clock, my computer, and my trainee ready, going over everything while writing the pre-warrants. See, there is a trick to the opening moves on the LM&O. Basically, there is a freight and passenger train coming out of Cincinnati (possibly followed by coal […]

January 30, 2026

Overdone CGI

t used to be that you needed a very bad actor to get the scenery-crewing over-emotions that old vaudevillians used to throw their emotions into the back rows. But now, with AI-creations trailblazed by firms such as Pixar, you can have it easy and cheap, even if you are sitting right in front of a mega-screen and don’t need this ham-fisted CGI playacting. I’m talking about modern Western animation, though I’ve seen it in foreign productions like Kpop Demon Hunters. In this case I was trapped in a car dealership waiting on slow repairs (do the mechanics share one set […]

January 30, 2026

OpsLog – LM&O – 1/28/2026

funny thing happened on the way to the slag pit. I found a long string of cars at the coke byproducts cutoff, fouling the spur. By the time I pulled that cut out of the way and hustled my pots to the pit and dumped them, they rolled down the hill like a couple of half-wrecking balls, bouncing through the midnight darkness. Cooled hard. So I’ll probably hear about that. That’s the sort of night it was. It started with me trying to run 927 (the Zanesville turn) trying to run against heavy eastbound traffic under a newbie dispatcher. I […]

January 30, 2026

OpsLog – YVRR – 1/29/2026

nother cozy little session on Smilin’ Jack’s Yosemite Valley Railroad, a neat little bedroom layout that simulates (sorta) SP operations in a California setting in an anytime (ninties?) period. John L and I have run with Jack several times in the past. The most notable thing about our growing abilities is our comfort with the timetable itself. The first time we ran, it was a lot of “now what do I do?” and “what’s next?”. Now, a couple of sessions in, we’ve learned the timetable. A long freight comes in. It is broken into three locals in the yard. These […]

February 1, 2026

Flying Fury (Review)

his one took me back – Flying Fury is the war diary of Major James McCudden, English World War One pilot, holder of the VC and victor of 57 air combats. And it was quite the book for me back in my teens – a guy flying about in his SE5a scout, deviling the Hun and fighting from everywhere from tree-top level, all the way up to 20,000 feet (without oxygen, a heated suit, or a parachute). Having been a pilot myself, the thought of fighting it out at my Cessna ceiling of14,000 feet, with nothing but plunging death facing you […]

February 5, 2026

Sharing is Caring, you bastards (DOG EAR)

‘m a little grumpy about this one. It will probably show. See, I’m coming to realize that nobody gives a floppy fuck about books (and movies) you really care about. People are too busy and too self-involved to really honor (or even consider) any recommendations you might offer. This came to me at Christmas at a family gathering. The night before, I’d just finished a short anime series, Odd Taxi. It came from a YouTube video by a Anime expert who listed the ten most overlooked animes, this being one of them. It’s got childish art (everyone in modern Tokyo are […]

February 8, 2026

The Cold Equations (Review)

ell, this was a strange way to find a lost story. Was watching an Anime (it wasn’t that good) and in it, the idea of airlocking someone comes up. One of the characters makes a crack about The Cold Equations. I have to admit I was curious and found it online – it’s a scifi from Tom Godwin, published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1954. And that made me dizzy – think about it. A lost story from before I was born ends up noticed in Japan, where it gets a shout out in an anime, which comes back to me through […]

February 8, 2026

OpsLog – Tusk Coast – 2/4/2026

mall midweek scratch session of the Tusk, students and retirees (Zeus as the former, and Joe and myself for the latter). And since it was Zeus’ birthday, we ran it as an ACL job using his equipment. He ran tower, Joe was on freight and me, I was the coal lugger. The first problem was that the mines were getting skimpy on me. I couldn’t believe the sheet (or shit) excel generated. I had three loads in Blacksville at the start, two more in Emerald as of 6am, and then nothing really cooking until 1pm (and a sparse scattering at […]

February 9, 2026

ShowLog – Jacksonville – 2/7/2026

acksonville is our long-haul show (though someone is trying to get us to Savanna now). For “build day”, it’s out the door by 8am, on site by 11am, and build our line. And this time, build and take-down, we were a bit short staffed (by “a bit”, I mean the wives got pressed into service). But build it we did. After that, a couple of us took off for our tour of Jaxport (arranged by our own Mr. Terry – thanks for that). Great ride through the facility, and if you think it was only shipping containers, you are mistaken. […]