Train Blog – Page 73 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

April 25, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O – 4/23/2025

wasn’t really at the top of my game that night. I’d gotten two boosters (Covid and Measles) and I feeling out of sorts. Also, there’s something going on my life that keeps me up at night. So I was tired. And foggy. I couldn’t even seem to work the dispatcher program, miss-clicking and fumbling my way through it. I wasn’t at my best. And it showed. I kicked out my usual signature warrant start, with orders to 202, SB2, 921, 927 and 223. I should just print up copies of these to cut out to issue, pre-written. Always the same. […]

May 11, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O (SNS) – 5/10/2025

kay, so this was a test flight. We were confident in our flight worthiness. Experienced crews. Casual weekend. Fully planned. With crosswinds. And thunderstorms. And the lights and radars were out. And a UFO was stooging about the boundary fence. We’d all come out for a Saturday Night Special, where fewer people means more elbow room and a chance to engage in more difficult operations. It’s rather fun, a challenge. Tonight was a two-for – TT&TO ops in a new and untested format, and an interlocking district (run by a towerman and signaller) in the Lehigh to Bethlehem stretch. First […]

May 15, 2025

OpsLog – TBL – 5/14/2025

ecky was sitting in the back of her parents’ overloaded Buick, rolling out of some Pennsylvania backwoods town, Tuskawhosit or something. Her dad had to stop for directions (again). They were trying to find the town Becky’s mom’s sister lived in; Westly. Staying two weeks with her coal-mining relatives did not excite her at all. Mom: “They have a canoe.” Becky: “The river is sludge.” Mom: “You can watch all the trains.” Becky: “I hate trains.” Mom: “Look at the fall colors on the trees!” Becky: “…” They were just rumbling down the beat-up two lane road out of town, […]

May 21, 2025

OpsLog – YVRR – 5/20/2025

he best thing about retirement (among many entries) is the fact that on a Tuesday afternoon I could cruse over to Cocoa, spool some time reading under a tree, then putter over to buddy Jack’s house for a session on the Yosemite Valley Railroad, a neat little bedroom line that has recently added another ten or so feet of running distance. Greg managed to make it this time so it wasn’t me running everything. Now I got to run with attention to what I was doing and really enjoy it. Not that I didn’t enjoy it last time, but I […]

May 25, 2025

OpsLog – FEC – 5/24/2025

nother Grand Day Out on the Florida East Coast over in Palm Bay. And if you think it’s all about running trains, no, it’s about all the stuff it takes to get together, to exchange greetings, eat too many cookies and get ready for top-level operations on this fully-signaled line. The setup was good. Rode over with Kyle and Terry, JB and me in the back seat. No Brightlines spotted, alas, but lunch at Culvers was good. All the usual guys showed at the Farnhams’, with JB and Jack talking about their shared butterfly fetish, me chatting with Chip, Al […]

May 29, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O – 5/28/2025

wo years ago, I was writing weekly pieces on train ops to a Facebook N-scale page. Reverend Jim and John DV know this guy who hosts it (“knew”, rather). Anyway, I’d also add our OpsLogs to his page so his readers could enjoy our massive sessions. And you know me – I try to punch up the sessions with drama and humor. Well, after one submission, the guy responds (I don’t remember verbatim – I left the page following this). Anyway, he told us me that we needed to get better. This chaos and confusion was amateur-level stuff and clearly […]

June 1, 2025

OpsLog – VSW – 5/31/2025

oke up on the day of operations to find the rain thundering down like the weeping of gods. And since gods are omnipotent and can presumably see the future and what would happen, no wonder they were weeping. Maybe I should have invited the gods to run with me on the Virginia SouthWestern. They’d probably to better than Orlando N-Trak did. So I hydroplaned my way to the clubhouse meet point/swamp to group up and ride out. Got to John’s in time, the whole squad, where we got a nice breakfast of donuts and coffee, a real lifesaver. I took […]

June 8, 2025

OpsLog – WBRR – 6/7/2025

knew this would happen. Turns out that the station agents for Dulce, Placerville and Dolores decided to celebrate a birthday. They went to the bath house in Placerville and steamed in their tubs, drinking stump hole. Coming out, they encountered three loose women and retired to the Lemmon Hotel next door where they engaged in activities outlawed in the Western Bay employee handbook. Needless to say, they are all now suffering Cupid’s Measles. This left the railroad shorthanded during a change in operational methods, with the superintendent agenting all the stations and the dispatcher keeping an eye on Navajo and […]

June 15, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O (TT&TO) – 6/14/2025

pecial Leigh, Monongahela & Ohio session for the evening of Father’s Day (or, for me, Dead-twig-on-the-tree-of-life day). On occasional Saturday nights, we turn up the difficulty level and run the LM&O in the early fifties, with train orders and the Bethlehem tower in service with its block signals (actually, little joke, they are interlocking signals. If you were there, you’d know what the deal was). Suddenly the crews are forced to think on their literal feet, determining their own movements, ducking into sidings and meeting opposing trains while running on their schedules. And I’m happy to say that we had […]

June 23, 2025

OpsLog – WAZU – 6/22/2025

o I’m sitting at my favorite table in my favorite coffee spot, watching the vehicular frustration at 17-92 and Lake Highland. Odd start for a blog. As most of you know from my long conversations around the clubhouse, my home has some termite infestations. With the bug men coming on Tuesday, I needed to clear the last of the heavy furniture from the baseboards. For that, I’d need my brother. But of course, he couldn’t come out any other time than Sunday noonish sometime sorta. Which is, as you all know, WAZU-time. When I contacted Doc and told him my […]