do – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

January 17, 2025

Too damn busy (DOG EAR)

veryone hears those stories of the businessman who retires and is dead in six months. I know an ex-cop who got a blood clot because he sat around all day watching TV. I don’t have these problems. It really clogged up last week. I’m a good dispatcher in model railroad ops sessions. I’m actually requested most times. So when two good friends of mine, Tom and John, both had sessions on last week’s Thursday (tied into a train convention) I ended up spending the entire day dispatching two layouts, back to back. It was 12 hours of doing what I […]

October 8, 2025

The Reason (DOG EAR)

o I’m sitting on the porch of the one-time Union Park Community Center / current Orlando N-Trak Train Club. Two acres of probably-needs-to-be-mowed grass stretches out before me, the sun turning it into waving emerald. And I’m thinking, Why do I do this? This week I’ve been out to this club, thirty minutes and $2.35 in tolls each way, too many times. Monday for Maintenance. Tuesday for a board meeting. Wednesday for the club night. And now it’s Friday, and I’m here to load the trailer when it arrives so we can take our portable layout to a weekend show. […]

February 15, 2026

With the Slack, That Will Do, and other railroad stories (Review)

‘m not an engineer or dispatcher; I play them at my model train club. Like factory work, like small shops, the modern world has pushed railroad engineering from its glory days into an un-fun, by-the-book, management-conflicting job (like everything else). I know that from my computer programming career – I went from doing entire projects freehand down to daily reporting and dull methodologies in the span of my forty years. And, like Charles H. Geletzke Jr, I’m glad I was there for the waning days of it, and now I’m glad I’m out. But enough about our world. The author […]