Blog – Page 249 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

September 6, 2026

OpsLog – TBL – 9/5/2026

ell, second weekend in a row for the Tuscarora Branch Line. This time, I took my own advice from last week and brought in cookies and offered free sodas to the crews to keep them all jingly on sugar. And it seemed to work. Not only did we run a full session this time, we did it in three hours! So, we were short one guy (I think he was training on Dagobah). Still, we had Shemp on the scheduled freights, Zach2 on the coal patrol, and Zeus doing his keyboard odyssey up in the tower. Me, I was station […]

September 11, 2026

OpsLog – P&WRR – 9/10/2026

ot an invite through a friend to come down to Sebastian, Florida for a session. The soup ticket was to Don Irace’s Providence & Worchester Railroad, which I knew nothing about. Bungled the entire trip over, overestimating travel times which put me sitting in the world’s nastiest donut shop for just over an hour, waiting for hot-time. Anyway, once Chip showed up and showed me where the railroad was, I met Don (who is a very nice guy, and who is the host of the segment Talking Ops with Don Irace on the Around the Layout podcast). The layout is packed (thoughtfully) […]

September 13, 2026

OpsLog – LM&O – 9/12/2026

irst thing – Did I get the date right this time? That established, okay, so usually after a session like that, I do an OpsLog like this, meaning massive praise at how wonderful we all were. Well, true enough. But reflecting on this, I’ve run on layouts tiny, on bedroom layouts so casual that (in one case) the owner offered us beer and pornography in his crew lounge), to layouts so realistic that you pucker, worried that you are going to goof and have all the pros sneering at you. But if I had to pigeon-hole us, one word, I’d say we’re Inclusive. […]

September 20, 2026

Satan’s World (Review)

his one is another of those Golden Oldies I got from the big used bookstore, by Poul Anderson back in 1968. And a funny little story about this. Was sitting in a fast food joint a week or so back, going from somewhere to somewhere else, just grabbing a bite and sitting in a booth with my book. Reading and chewing. A booth or two down on the other side of the aisle, two churches (a man and a woman, not seemingly married) were yacking away about some sort of church speech or presentation they were going to make, outlining […]