Train Blog – Page 71 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

January 13, 2025

ShowLog – 1-(11,12)-2025 – Deland

f you want to know what it feels like to be a astronaut flying away from Earth, into deep space, try getting to the Deland Fairgrounds at 5:30 AM. I just sat in my car and sighed, thinking my lofty thoughts. One thought – I sure overestimated my travel time. Another thought – I wish I’d brought a book. We got good attendance for setup, other than the Polish Precision Rifle Drill Team performance. You see, it’s quite simple. Two people hold the layout in place. Four people, christened One, Two, Three and Four each take a called-out leg type […]

January 23, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O – 1/22/2025

o I was lucky to make it at all to the session tonight. After attending to “family issues” (the same way the Titanic’s sinking was noted as “shipping concerns”) I got there windblown and frozen with a half-hour to spare. I’d signed up for ore loads east and ore loads east it was going to be. On the dispatcher desks were Phil and Pete, Phil for a return visit to bedlam and Pete as a newbie DS. Okay, since I didn’t have time to think this out, giving Phil a five minute clinic on how my dispatcher panel works was […]

February 2, 2025

OpsLog – TBL – 2/1/2025

ecided on this nice open weekend to head over to the club for a quiet solo run of the Tuscarora Branch Line. The wife came along to read in the back (that’s what she said, anyway) and Pete came out, and later, Mike. So that became a bit distracting. We were either talking or putting run-through, time-jump units on the line. I was trying to run the tower and the scheduled jobs (and didn’t do very well with either). JB and Pete took a mess of pictures. So yes, some blunders on my part. The worst goof was setting out […]

February 5, 2025

OpsLog – YVRR – 2/4/2025

he last time (a week or so ago) I was supposed to run on Jack Ferguson’s nifty little Yosemite Valley Railroad, I was at the dealership and found out that my car was a road-surface Hindenburg (fuel was leaking from a defective pump). So we called that one off. This was our reschedule. Now, Jack’s railroad is a nifty little runner, unitracked and smooth running. It’s got a full loop and ops are essentially a train coming onto the line (like my MT-1) and eventually leaving (like my EM-2 (the PeeDee)). There is some yard work, a pair of locals, […]

February 9, 2025

ShowLog – Jacksonville – 2/8/2025

hen I was in college, there was a board game about a Soviet sea invasion called Jacksonville: The beaches of DOOM. I never played it but I think I lived it on Friday. So the rubber hit the road – and blew. Three separate road incidents. Our trailer was low on Thursday when Jeff picked it up. Even through he refilled it, it was dead flat Friday morning, making him and his wife run over to a tire shop to get it replaced. Meanwhile, Greg hit something on 95 resulting in a catastrophic failure (tire, tube and rim) delaying him […]

February 16, 2025

OpsLog – Tusk Coast – 2/14/2025

t was a quiet night at the club, one of our Friday Night “Just Run Trains” events. I usually go to them to be the troubleshooter/babysitter (you gotta have a senior member present, if only to unlock the gates and door, and to plunger the toilet, right?). Since Zeus was up from Miami and not much was going on, we tugged Tuscarora out, quickly set it up and ran a fast session, just tower and local. Zeus took first shift running while I did leverman. There wasn’t much to say about it, which (like an airplane flight) is really how […]

February 16, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O TT&TO – 2/15/2025

‘ve always said that not many model train clubs (especially temperamental-equipment N-scale clubs) do what we do. We pack more trains into a session than anyone. Last night, on our Saturday Night Special, we really went all out on a Time Table & Train Order session, where men are men and the dead are pulped. Our timetable has eight scheduled trains. Given the wide range of times and outcomes for locals, we have to run them all as extras. And under TT&TO, extras generate paperwork. The time we ran with just scheduled trains last year, I think I wrote John […]

February 24, 2025

OpsLog – WAZU – 2/23/2025

o what to say? Andy did his best to set up a better session, an improved session. His remote cameras are clearer than before, that horizontal interference gone. And his radios – big change there. With the ear pieces (not buds), you can now comfortably follow the conversation on the line. Where once it was a scratchy, crackling hell (with some family jamming us with their domestic trivialities) we now actually had comfortable, solid communications. While there was still a little stepping-on action, it wasn’t too bad. It was more like watching a railroad video with the dispatcher soundtrack added. […]

February 27, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O – 2/26/2025

f the club has a motto for operations, it’s “Work it out on the ground”. Last night, it was more like “Wring it out of the Clown” with West-Side Dispatcher as the clown. Another “Have a beer when I get home” night at the old clubhouse. So the session started out well enough. We were running an LV Interchange train, a run that we’ll see if we can keep up with it. It’s a bit time-challenged but yes, it might work. But I’d talked things out with the locals (Mingo and Zanesville) and made a pinky promise with 927 (ZV) […]

March 2, 2025

OpsLog – WBRR – 3/1/2025

hat I’m going to tell you can save your life!” This was my attention-getting opener for my clinic on Time Table & Train Order and, as hoped, really got attention and jacked everyone up in their seats. Al Sohl held this clinic/open house at his place – it wasn’t really an NMRA “official” event, just his club hosting clinics and an op session for people to have fun. I was third up; Eric M and Chip P had already gone (very good clinics on how the Western Bay scenery and how to present to judges for your show-pieces in working towards […]