failure – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

June 23, 2019

NoOpsLog – FEC – 6/22/2019

t happens – we were in mid-ops on Ken Farnham’s fine Florida East Coast. I was dispatching, had three trains southbound trains moving towards Palm Bay. The local was out of the way. Another one was done early and could run home. JB was working the yard with a team that was having a good time. The other shed was packed with engineers. And then the layout shut down. There was a short and every attempt made to fix it blew yet another fuse. It happens. I’ve had my own Cuesta Grade conk out. Our club layout, the LM&O, has […]

August 18, 2022

Retraction on AnyImage (DOG EAR)

ell, this is embarrassing. Last week I gushed about AnyImage, which was software you could use to embed your website with an image neatly into Facebook (which has become a Metapain). Sure, it worked great the first few times I used it. Liked it enough that I used it to post a DOG EAR piece promoting it. However, the day I went to post up that praise, the site asked for me to register (because I’d used it two or three times and they wanted me to sign up). Look, I prefer it free and clear, but if I need […]

July 29, 2023

On Sheet – When Things Go Wrong

any of you might remember that incident we had on Tusk Hill (a division of my Tuscarora layout, where we run an English Midlands session rather than a western Pennsylvania one). Here is the disaster report. So the designer/builder Steve (a good friend whose help has been critical in the development of my microlayout) came out to the club (where we keep it) and took a look at it. He checked the obvious possibilities (particularly the solder joints) and after two hours gave up. It would take a lot more work. So he loaded it into his car (yay, microlayouts) […]