Train Blog – Page 69 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

September 26, 2024

OpsLog – LM&O – 9/25/2024

wake up in a sunny room. Surprising, It’s not the train crew flophouse I’m used to. A woman in white comes in to put a vase of flowers on the sill. Is this Heaven? No, wait – she’s a nurse! Is this a hospital? Was my train in a wreck? Then I see the embroidered lettering on her apron. Zanesville Sanitarium. I’m in the nut house! Yes, you guys put me there. What a frustrating session. I think I must have answered about thirty questions and found at least two drifting engines that had shorted the layout. It’s a little […]

October 6, 2024

ShowLog – Deland – 10/5/2024

he night before the show. Getting a full eight is very important before the early morning setup, the all-day running, tear-down and take-home. Which is why I pulled a “Zach” and got about two hours of snooze. Actually, I hit the bed early enough but woke up in the middle of the might, my mind tumbling with club membership issues, show issues, and the upcoming convention next weekend (which I have to host operations for twenty hours AND give a clinic DURING a possible hurricane). So yes, a lot of my mind. The cats woke me up before the alarm […]

October 20, 2024

OpsLog – TBL – 10/19/2024

nice summer day on the Tuscarora – an aspect we’ll mention a bit later. Greg and I were thinking of a two-man run but got enough interest to bump it up to six. Of course, I got there two hours early and set up in thirty minutes (why do I do this (because I’m usually freaking before ops, I’d wager)). But the guys all came out and were ready to run. I spent some of the down time explaining to the new guys how it worked (yes, this isn’t simply a tiny 2×4 foot train layout). But of course, they’d […]

October 24, 2024

OpsLog – LM&O – 10/23/2024

t seems like the trope of railroad fiction; a moment where the high railroad summit is packed with trains and the grizzled dispatcher has to ask a young cub engineer to pull off a move that, if it fails, will lock up the railroad for hours. And that is exactly how it went down. At the 2/3rds point, I had traffic building in Red Rock and Lehigh, the summit approaches. They were pretty plugged. To get trains out, I needed to run a bunch over the hill. To clear Red Rock for westbound moves, I needed to get Jude’s long […]

November 10, 2024

ShowLog – Lake Nona – 11/9/2024

o this is what an easy train show is like. Instead of getting up at 5am and running out to Deland to build our layout in the dark, then walk around it all day, with this show at Lake Nona Middle School we were able to go out on Friday and casually put things together. The next day, it was a leisurely local drive out. The layout was already up and ready – we just put trains on and ran. We had a lot of help this time around, with new members wearing their bright yellow bullseye shirts and really […]

November 11, 2024

OpsLog – WAZU – 11/10/2024

f you are thinking that you already got posted from me this weekend for a Saturday show, you did. But now it’s Sunday and a big bunch of us train-freaks are over at Doc Andy’s, running on the WAZU. For once, I didn’t jump for the DS panel. One, I wanted to run some trains for once and two, some of my friends were going to need my burly brawn assistance to get an old lady up some stairs. Since I was on a short leash that day, I chose to run trains and see how it would play out. […]

November 17, 2024

OpsLog – VSW – 11/16/2024

his wasn’t my best idea – going over to Polk City to run the Virginia Southwestern when I also had a Saturday Night Ops session at the club later. So I’d be dispatching for, let’s see, eight hours (and on the road for three). And all that model railroading and I wouldn’t touch a throttle. Still, I do enjoy dispatching. We approached the VSW with the same caution that sappers would an unexploded bomb. Last time on this railroad, everything blew up and the session ended with a critical staging area dead. The only reason we were able to run […]

November 17, 2024

OpsLog – LM&O Saturday Night Special – 11/16/2024

ell, you can’t spell “Shenanigans” without “Shannon”. And, it seems, you can’t spell “Dumbass” and “Dipwad” and even “Wackadoodle” without him, too. I’d really overbooked Saturday. I agreed to run on the Virginia Southwestern earlier that day, but the club was having a Saturday Night Special session that evening. I’d asked at the business meeting if we could maybe, you know, skip it but too many people wanted it. I even considered not going but Shannon sweet-talked/blackmailed me into doing it. So, spending thousands of husband points and possibly fatiguing a year or more off my life, I agreed to […]

November 24, 2024

OpsLog – FEC – 11/23/2024

consideration I’d never had before – the environment of your train room. When I was fifteen or so (and since it is my birthday today and I am sixty-six, that was effing fifty-one years ago), my dad and I built a moderately large HO layout in our Cincinnati basement. In the winter, the floors and walls were icy and the air cave-cold. I remember crawling under the layout to wire (thanks, Dad. I see your guile only now) on the stone-chilled floor, my joints stiff and my hands, ass and knees numb. So yes, your environment means a lot. Recently […]

November 28, 2024

OpsLog – LM&O – 11/27/2024

s usual, we are never sure how many people will come out for a night-before-Thanksgiving session. We’ve always underestimated our turnout. And this year, as in years past, you’ve shown up just how much you dislike your family and relatives by coming out for a good night of full ops. And as always, we are glad to have you. As John C’s photo shows below, we had a large number of club members (plus a couple of friends and family, a guest or two, and even our favorite den-mom) to run with us. So our overall perspective from the dispatchers’ […]