Train Blog – Page 79 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

January 30, 2026

OpsLog – LM&O – 1/28/2026

funny thing happened on the way to the slag pit. I found a long string of cars at the coke byproducts cutoff, fouling the spur. By the time I pulled that cut out of the way and hustled my pots to the pit and dumped them, they rolled down the hill like a couple of half-wrecking balls, bouncing through the midnight darkness. Cooled hard. So I’ll probably hear about that. That’s the sort of night it was. It started with me trying to run 927 (the Zanesville turn) trying to run against heavy eastbound traffic under a newbie dispatcher. I […]

January 30, 2026

OpsLog – YVRR – 1/29/2026

nother cozy little session on Smilin’ Jack’s Yosemite Valley Railroad, a neat little bedroom layout that simulates (sorta) SP operations in a California setting in an anytime (ninties?) period. John L and I have run with Jack several times in the past. The most notable thing about our growing abilities is our comfort with the timetable itself. The first time we ran, it was a lot of “now what do I do?” and “what’s next?”. Now, a couple of sessions in, we’ve learned the timetable. A long freight comes in. It is broken into three locals in the yard. These […]

February 9, 2026

ShowLog – Jacksonville – 2/7/2026

acksonville is our long-haul show (though someone is trying to get us to Savanna now). For “build day”, it’s out the door by 8am, on site by 11am, and build our line. And this time, build and take-down, we were a bit short staffed (by “a bit”, I mean the wives got pressed into service). But build it we did. After that, a couple of us took off for our tour of Jaxport (arranged by our own Mr. Terry – thanks for that). Great ride through the facility, and if you think it was only shipping containers, you are mistaken. […]

February 15, 2026

OpsLog – WVN – 2/14/2026

o here it is… Butt Monkey (noun) 1. An annoying and irksome person. 2. An object of abuse and ridicule. And on the Saint Valentines Day Massacre running of the West Virginia Northern, I got to be the session’s Butt Monkey. I’m not sure how this happened. Hey, in my years of blogging ops sessions, I’ve written about plenty of hapless butt monkeys, people who barge about in sessions, cluelessly delay others, lose their tempers or tell long-winded stories while I’m trying to mentally work out my switch moves. Some are such monkeys (either by personality or inability) that I […]

February 22, 2026

OpsLog – LM&O (TT&TO) – 2-21-2026

n high craggy mountains lost in the mists of the grim Borderlands, old wizards practice the dark arts of Time Table & Train Order operations, demanding times of 1:1 (and perhaps slower), of steadfast observance of their Book of Lore (The Condensed Code of Operating Rules) and archaic rites to deny access of acolytes not established in their order. Their membership is secret, excursive and, frankly, dying. At a beat-up cinder block building in the rundown edge of Stupidville, a youngish group assembles to try TT&TO our way, with the clock buzzing at 8:1, with a lot of guys who aren’t quite […]

February 26, 2026

OpsLog – LM&O – 2/25/2026

ears ago, my father passed away at 4am at a local hospital. By 9am that morning, I was writing his obituary. “You’re the writer,” my family told me. Yes, so it’s a bit like that. It was a very stormy night on the railroad last night. Tempers high, expectations low, waits long, and on improperly aligned turnouts – shorts. There are a number of issues we had – most of them you know, some of them I don’t know, but yeah, let’s debrief it from my point of view. The dispatcher had a number of issues. First off: the east […]

March 1, 2026

OpsLog – OSMR – 2/28/2026

e picked up an invite from our sister (half-sister, given it’s “half-O”) clubs, the Orlando Society of Model Railroaders, for an ops session. They still want to learn from us (which is odd, given the hash we made of our last session). But no, an open invite, and I was pleased at our turnout – we were (just looking) half the crews. We had myself, Kyle, Phil, Terry (in club grays, looking so team-spirited), Mike (in club-heritage black) and Pete (in some sort of black shirt I think he got off a dead ninja (I’m assuming that Friday night at […]

March 8, 2026

OpsLog – Tusk Valley – 3/7/2026

club buddy of mine, Pete, mentioned he’d be out at the clubhouse on Saturday, just a casual hang-out deal. Figured I’d run Tuscarora solo – he just wanted to putter about the main line on the club layout. Fine – I’ve run solo before. But then a new member of the club – young Zach, named so as not to be confused with President Zach – asked if he could try it. He’s just starting out, has a small place, and wants to see how micro ops work. Sure, why not. Of course, I always invite guests to run their […]

March 15, 2026

OpsLog – WVN – 3/14/2026

tanding on the ballast in Huntington Yard, night falling heavily over the property, a massive steam engine hissing behind me. Trainmaster Gail Komar (or “Tuffnut”, as the crews call her) is telling me that this reefer block needs to go up the hill quick since it’s thawing out in the here and now. True, I can hear the brine drip-drip-dripping on the ties as the block ice shrinks. She gives me that bombardier stare of hers. “Your the man for the job. The only man. Everyone else is off shift.” “It’s covered, Ma’am.” So it had been a long day […]

March 17, 2026

MeetLog – Vero Beach – 3/16/2026

he Eastern Model Railroad Meet (ironic since, recently, the eastern division of the sunshine region of the NMRA was recently abolished) was held today, way way down in Vero Beach today. Since two N-Trakers were asked to come down and speak (me, on TT&TO, and Reverend Jim, because I badgered him into speaking last minute on T-Trak because “Weren’t you a public speaker?” works really well. We also had Joel Morse (“Layout planning for operations”) and Host Chip Pecere (“Designing your layout before construction”). Interesting, two other people cancelled out of the one Jim covered (“Introduction to T-Trak Modelling”) (Including no-show […]