Florida – Page 2 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

November 6, 2022

OpsLog – FEC – 11/5/2022

uite a crazy day (and night) on the Florida East Coast. Worst bit – in mid-session in the yard shed, there was a turntable fire which filled the room with fumes and knocked out the table. The table itself, normally able to be lifted off, seems welded in place. That really sucks – I’ve run the hostler job and really like the table. Out in the main room, there were the usual issues, including a train getting stuck in the runnel and one operator determined to run through all our defect cards (and that would be Kyle, who scored three […]

June 25, 2023

OpsLog – FEC – 6/24/2023

moment of kick-ass history. The Luftwaffe was bombing the crap out of London. Things were getting tight for Hitler’s invasion schedule – they must break the Royal Air Force. On September 15th, 1940, the Germans threw everything they had into a full assault on the English Capital. From the bunkers below, Winston Churchill turned to Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park and asked about their active reserves. Park replied, simply, “There are none”. And that was the epic day on the FEC. I started working with my lovely yardlets to move trains, myself on Trim, JB as yardmaster and Bev […]

July 23, 2023

OpsLog – FEC – 7/22/2023

smell something burning.” I was working the out-n-back from Cocoa Yard to Frontenac, fussing over mismarked lading slips, trying to figure out what someone did and didn’t do a couple of weeks back in City Point (without a Rosetta Stone, either). And that’s when I smelled smoke. Engineer Chip was working the lower deck. When I asked him if his engine was on a switch, he told me no. But a car on his train was on a switch, one that had been set against him. And the truck of a wheel delicately placed with love between a rail and […]

October 22, 2023

OpsLog – FEC – 10/21/2023

ot home after a long late drive from the east coast to find, on the aptly-named “Discord”, that my friends who also attended the Farnhams’ FEC session were chortling about long waits. Really? I was on the big green panel that day and, in all honesty, I was playing it like a virtuoso on a grand piano (just saying). We started out late because of a pre-session chat. Once I took my seat and the clock started, I was looking at four trains on the layout and two holding in the wings of staging, waiting to come out. In short […]

May 19, 2024

OpsLog – FEC – 05/18/2024

ell, this just shows the dangers of over-scheduling. In my defense, we’d agreed to have “night ops” at the club layout this Saturday, and then a few days later the FEC crew call came out. The club is a commitment I have to honor (and it’s fun) but the FEC hasn’t run in six months and I wanted to jump back aboard (it’s also fun). So that’s it – run to Palm Bay in the morning, operate until late afternoon, then burn across half the state to the LM&O for the evening session. And I had a sandwich with me […]

June 23, 2024

OpsLog – FEC – 6/22/2024

read a lot of books. In fact, I’ve read all the Hornblower novels. Even read the Patrick O’Brian novels about a British expedition that rounds Cape Horn with its endless pounding storms. And I didn’t get the heaving and scurvy of that passage in the op session, but I got the damn rain! I was at the dispatcher’s desk in the “command” shed, along with the missus and the Farnhams. In the other shed, we had a full house and a heavy schedule. And we might as well have been ships in a storm-tossed formation, for all the chance of […]

August 25, 2024

OpsLog – FEC – 8/24/2024

ough day for me on the Florida East Coast. Evidently we simulated love-bug season. I could hardly see out of the cab and the wipers didn’t help. Squinting for half the session. But that comes in later. So Ken wanted to dispatch and in a surprise move, put Zach into the trim job (I’ve done it several times – it’s good casual fun). This, of course, meant we could all talk about Zach in the ops shed, so it was an amusing day. Delighted to find myself moving road units – been a long time. My first job was the […]

March 9, 2025

OpsLog – FEC – 3/8/2025

ait, wait, wait. That’s all railroading was sometimes. The engineer for 101 South yawned through his bushy beard, the setting sun painting the right side of his lead unit, reflecting off the shiny refrigerated cars behind him, turning their white and orange flanks almost toyish in its light. Already the track-side buildings were silhouetted, their long shadows hiding the grubby weeds and litter along the Florida East Coast main. Fortunately he was running south with empty reefers; while he wouldn’t have time-critical oranges losing value, there were still schedule commitments to keep. It was the height of harvest and they […]

April 21, 2025

OpsLog – FEC – 4/19/2024

n the ride over to Palm Bay and the Farnham’s Florida East Coast, Kyle and I discussed ways we could help Ken make the railroad a little easier to prepare. We do drive over to Doc’s WAZU to help stage and clean. Maybe something like that would keep the FEC enjoyable for the Farnhams (and operational for us) in the coming years. I guess what we did give him was a wonderful session. Kyle and I seem to have the Midas Touch for sessions these days. We’ve had a string of good ones. The best thing was that we were trying to […]

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 […]