Blog

August 3, 2014

ShowLog – Orlando Fairgrounds – 8/3/2014

‘ll admit that a two day weekend show is tough. We need to run for six hours a day and then pack and go. And that’s six hours of running with kids, of asking people not to touch (or, ferchristsakes, lean on) the layout. But today, while long, was easy. Had a sizable crew show up on time. Steve brought donuts*. Everyone there grabbed a rag and some alcohol and cleaned their way around the layout. Fifteen minutes until open, trains started coming out from Bowden Yard and the NS North Jax. When people came in, we were running. And […]
August 3, 2014

Trees of Change (Review)

rees of Change is the second of a three book YA series authored by Janessa Gayheart, the first of which (The Thousand Year Ghost) I gave a reserved review. The author contacted me and asked me consider the series as a whole. So, as a writer, another rung of that long ladder has been reached: I got a free review copy. Anyway, even though you could just follow the link above to remember the deal, young Hickory lives in a world a thousand years in the future, altered by some titanic change that swept everything away. Portland is buried under […]
August 10, 2014

A Dance of Dragons (Review)

f you think dragons are big, you haven’t seen anything yet. This monster is 959 pages, and it’s the fifth of the Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones series. So If you haven’t started this, you’ve got some reading ahead. And yes, overall, I’d say the journey has been worth it. So for those who arn’t involved, The Game of Thrones is a massive story about hundreds of people in a fantasy world seemingly cursed to be stuck in its medieval period for, like, forever. Think of that – no scientific advances, no gunpowder or cars or […]
August 14, 2014

Vacation (Dog Ear)

s a kid, I remember our vacations (such as they were for a poor-as-church-mice Navy family), stopping at my Grandparent’s place at Buckeye Lake, Ohio. It was a nice lake-front cottage, the type with creaky floors, old wagon wheels suspended and fitted out with light bulbs, and just-decommissioned outhouses serving as toolsheds. Croquet was a very adventurous game, a random contest amid the gnarly oak roots. Most mornings I’d come out and see my father sitting all alone on the deck, bamboo pole optimistically deployed, a silhouette against the silent lake. He never caught dinner, just mid-sized catfish he’d throw […]
August 17, 2014

Giving worse that I got (DOG EAR)

kay, I’ve cautioned about saying things on Facebook and pondered about writing train reports differently depending on how well I knew the person. Now comes a cautionary tale about writing reviews. A while back, I reviewed Jenessa Gayheart’s book Eidolon: The Thousand Year Ghost. I had some good criticisms to make, specifically involving the technicalities of lighter-than-airship travel. But I was a little… um… snarky in my review. I remember thinking that while I wrote it, and thought, yeah, but it adds zest. I’ve also mentioned that I have to monitor my comment stream for spam (that’s why you don’t […]
August 17, 2014

The Wheels of Chance (Review)

t was a time we can scarcely imagine, the late 1890s. Whereas steam trains ran on their own timetables to predetermined destinations, and horses with carts just ate and shit day after day regardless of whether you used them or not, and automobiles were an experimental dream, there were… bicycles! Now ordinary people, shop clerks and unhappy daughters, could easily take to the roads and travel where and when they wanted, an absolute freedom so rare in the class-conscious, socially-locked Victorian era. And just as the bicycles themselves were undergoing evolutionary changes, trikes and penny farthings and the like, so […]
August 18, 2014

OpsLog – Saluda Grade – 8/18/2014

ronically, the last time I ran on the Saluda line, it was March of 2012, two and a half years ago. The ironic bit was that what I wrote here was a complaint about the changing club dynamics, the economy and general aging that was making a session here so difficult. Happily Jim brought his layout back after years and years down. And happily we had crew enough to run all the trains (except one local). But for its part, the railroad did what it was supposed to do: simulating running two branches of the N&S lines around Asheville (the […]
August 21, 2014

Used (DOG EAR)

erailed. It’s a book by James Siegel which I picked up out of a bin in front of Sanford’s Maya Used Books. It was a hot day, I was flipping through their sidewalk bin of hardbacks, caught on the name (I’m a train fan), read the flap, noted the price (a buck) and added it to my stack. It sat next to my bed (in the pile of potentials) for over a year. I think, twice, I must have moved it to get up the dust and cat hair. And finally, between other books, I read it. Wow. I won’t […]
August 23, 2014

OpsLog – FEC – 8/23/2014

very time I drive to Ken Farnham’s Florida East Coast railroad, something happens on the trip. Once, a ladder came off a truck in front of us, spinning and sparking along the road like some giant spin-the-bottle game. Then there was the truck tire that blew up like a bomb right in front of us. This time, a four foot long stuffed fish toy (yeah, read that again) came off a pickup and rolled down the passing stripe. There wasn’t much room (barriers on either side of the road, so no runoff). While everyone else braked, I tucked my tiny […]
August 24, 2014

Journey to the Past (Review)

nd now we reach the end of The Story of Eidolon, third of the trilogy. This book sees our young hero Hickory finally assuming the duties of an adult, actually joining scouting missions for the community of Portla (now that its good citizens have pulled their heads out of the mire that buried their pasts and have started looking forward again). Finally, we get a chance to leave the community and see what is beyond. I like these sorts of stories, that of a changed world with the evidences of what it had been. Like those shepherds who grazed their […]