Blog – Page 99 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

September 18, 2016

Little Wars (Audio Review)

grew up with war games. From our early Avalon Hill games, from playing Jutland with my dad in a living room with all furniture removed, from summer games with my friends: Africa Corps, Midway, Panzerblitz. I owned probably a hundred games and played them all. But I fondly remember my father, before going on a nine-month cruise to Vietnam, purchasing two Napoleonic armies made of lead figures, one English (for me) and one French (for him). And during this time, we painted them up. When all is said and done, we probable spent more prep time than play time on […]

September 18, 2016

OpsLog – FEC – 9/27/2016

I guess it’s about pattern recognition. When you first sit down in front of Ken Farnham’s FEC control panel, you are struck with the idea of just what sort of idiot you were for taking on this job. I always feel this way. After all, the panel wraps around you, something like four or five feet across, with a bewildering number of toggles and lights and this long, long layout. And once that clock goes hot, everyone wants to move, there are trains marked with secretive red lights (with no obvious indication of who they are) idling impatiently, all wanting […]

September 22, 2016

Perfect makes Practice (DOG EAR)

y brother is Mr. Fixit. Everyone goes to him for practical tinkerings. When we got the phone call that my dad was sliding away, we were in his garage replacing the bearings on my bike’s wheel hub. My sister, she’s the international speaker on medical issues. She does all those conferences and speaking tours. And she also shoves probes up people’s wazzos and makes damn good money doing it. When it comes to medical questions, everyone rings her up. Me? Heh. Me. What do I bring to the table? Outside of corporate compliance and a wide span of devoured books, […]

September 28, 2016

OpsLog – LM&O – 9/28/2016

ou know it’s going to be a bad ops night at the club when you get into the lot and there is one car sitting there, all by itself. You really know it is when that one person tells you that Calypso Yard is dead. No power. No trains can move. Yikes. Calypso is a collective yard on the eastern approaches to our steep mountain district. Cars from several different lines are gathered here, to be tacked onto westbounders boosted through the high pass. And descending trains do the opposite, dropping cuts to be parceled out to other roads. We […]

September 29, 2016

Frustrations (DOG EAR)

’ve written these before. Usually I explain what I thought writing would be, and then what it actually is. Generally it’s some mechanical nutbaggery, something that doesn’t bring understanding or joy or excitement to others (and myself). Thursday was posting day for another Dog Ear piece, one about Government Labs. It was just a fun piece, something I whipped out in the moment when I noticed the thoughts I had over that phrase and how worn out it’s becoming. Just a fun little thing. I’d had it prepped a few days early. It should be no problem to get it […]

September 29, 2016

Ready Player One (Review)

eady Player One is, in a nutshell, a geeky love-affair with the eighties, the era’s games, its movies and media. And just like some of my girlfreinds from that time, I think I remember them more fondly than they actually deserved (no, not you. If you read this and are mad about it, this isn’t about you ) Like the console games of that time – which were simple and fun – this pretty much discribes this book. So, the setup – Wade is a poor kid (in the future, pretty much everybody is poor) living in stacked trailers in […]

October 2, 2016

Floor Games (Review)

can only imagine what being H.G. Well’s kid must have been like. Sure, his dad was a bit out there, with Free Love and his divorce and such. Who knows what that would have been like, at the tale end of the oh-so-proper Victorian Age. But then again, it must have been fun, too. I mean, wow, your dad was writing about Martians striding about in fighting machines, blasting crowds of people. He wasn’t, say, a chemist. He was an early pioneer of writing. Imagine the bedtime stories. Or the play sessions. This one came out in 1911 (and predated […]

October 3, 2016

OpsLog – SPR – 9/30/2016

dispatch a lot. And usually I have no problem taking this position. So when we were all loitering in our briefing for the Southwestern Pennsylvania Railroad and the super called for the DS, I was standing there doing my “Ah, shucks, sure, I can do it” modest number when someone snatched it right out from under me. Blink blink. Wait. What just happened? It ended up biting me in the ass, too. I was a heavy coal job straining out of Pittsburgh, entering the main (in hidden staging, controlled by the dispatcher). I called. He cleared me and (supposedly) aligned […]

October 4, 2016

OpsLog – CNW – 10/1/2016

new position for me. Ran on the basement-packing Chicago & NorthWestern, miles of main line with industry all the way, all fed from the massive Proviso Yard. Zoom in on that yard. Dozens of tracks. Zoom closer. At one side, engine facilities and fueling decks. Zoom even closer. See him? The guy who runs engines out from the shops and puts them on the ready track? And who plucks them off the arrivals, inspects them, services them, and refuels them? Yeah, that’s me. Low-class dirty in my suspenders and grubby ball cap. And that’s what I did – moved engines […]

October 5, 2016

OpsLog – PCD – 10/1/2016

t’s a long run from Trinidad to Denver, mostly double-track main, one for passenger, one for freight. All down its length, industrial centers, mines and cities sprawl along the desert route. And unlike the SPR, this time I wasn’t bashful. I gave everyone a quarter second to opt for dispatcher and then my hand shot up. “I’ll do it”. The pace of this railroad is pretty easy, and if you look ahead you can pretty much route them from track to track to keep everything moving. Of course, I’m always surprised by how many operators don’t call in control points […]