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 […]

September 22, 2026

OpsLog – WAZU – 9/20/2026

id the Dispatcher Doodee on Doc’s sprawling WAZU. Had a great lunch (gumbo, since the Doc is a swamp-boy) and then settled myself in the back-room chair to run the railroad at peak efficiency. So let’s review something about timetables and efficiency. The thing is, the WAZU is simply a mother-may-I operation, nothing more. I’m not saying that’s good or bad – I’ve run MMI on my home layouts and at the club in the early days. We tried warrants on the WAZU but we simply could not get them out fast enough. So while we might sound like we’re kinda sorta […]

September 24, 2026

OpsLog – LM&O – 9/23/2026

‘ll admit relief when I checked the minutes of our last meeting and saw that Kyle would be dispatching. I think I needed a break from it. At the WAZU (blog link redacted), I’d had that “incident” at Bigg’s Jct, a combination of high expectations (mine) and low comedy (the krews). I had to orchestrate a simple saw-by with sign-language responses on one-of-nine monitors while Doc stood over me with the Holy Timetable, gesturing and yammering about where the meet was supposed to be. But that was then and this was now and I was on the road. When I […]

September 27, 2026

The Nonexistent Knight (Review)

kay, don’t dismiss this out of hand, but I got this book from a young (and sharp) kid who attends my Zen class. But, yeah, we both read a lot and we both like China Miéville so there’s that. Anyway, The Nonexistent Knight is a delightful tale by Italo Calvino, written (I’m thinking) in 1950 or so (judging from the copyright). I’m going to make a guess and figure the entire point of this novel is to mock the ideas of chivalry, of knighthood, and the tales which speak worshipfully of them. We begin with King Charlemagne riding along his assembled army, […]

October 4, 2026

ShowLog – Deland – 10/3/2026

t’s okay to run late. But never, never run early. So yes, that’s what I always say. But in preparation for the Deland Show, I popped into the donut shop at 5am sharp for some “crew food”. Even easing down the road in my transition era car, I made it to the fairgrounds at 5:35am. Yeah, a bit early. It was dark and humid and wet, and I was running a good chance of security sniffing around me. With that in mind, I left the property and drove east to New Smyrna Beach where I stopped at the first convenience […]

October 11, 2026

The Cloven Viscount (Review)

nother novella from Italo Calvino, who brought us the strange and insightful The Nonexistent Knight. In this one, a Viscount is fighting the Turks and finds himself on the wrong end of a cannon. As the author notes, with good reason, the best way to attack a cannon is from the sides or rear. But, oh well, our Viscount Medardo literally takes the full load dead center. The field surgeons struggle with that remains and manage to preserve him. Most of him. Well, half. He only exists as the left side of himself, the rest of his absent body cloaked […]

October 12, 2026

OpsLog – WVN – 10/10/2026

nother day railroading in the hectic month of October, packed between a Deland show and an NMRA convention. I mean, hell, do guys who fish have months like this? Or do I have a problem and need help? So anyway, Kyle and I toodled over early and met up with the crew, most of us sitting around and talking about old-people ailments we suffer (Kyle was, of course, silent). I thought I had a pretty exciting month but got beat by everyone. I guess if you’re going to lose a competition like this, well, that’s fine. Anyway, we survivors (the […]