Highland – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

December 2, 2024

OpsLog – HL – 12/1/2024

here are things I’m thankful for. For example, I’m thankful they detected the cancer before it hit a nearby nerve and spread through my body. And I’m thankful that when my ultralight engine failed on a steep takeoff within five hours of soloing, I didn’t panic – stick forward, get speed back, and glide down to the lake to kiss it with my pontoons. But my latest thanks goes to the fact that I didn’t push to run the Highland Line under TT&TO. Talk about a narrow shave with death. Up in the tower, I had my hands full. Host […]

March 17, 2025

OpsLog – Highland Division – 3/16/2025

hen I was a small lad, I dreamed of dispatching. The idea of trains ordered to meet other trains at passing sidings, of rolling through stations, that was a really cool image. It was an unrealized dream. And now? Today on the New Haven Highland Division, dispatching was like Donkey Kong. The entire day I was running up ramps and jumping over barrels, tormented by a host of huge monkeys beating their chests. Really, I was wedged in a corner behind a panel that didn’t make a lot of sense at times, yelling across the room or squinting up at […]

November 25, 2025

OpsLog – Highland Division – 11/23/2025

o I’m sitting in my office in the back of Bank Tower, writing out train orders. It was just after 7am and the Bristol Local was calling for paper out. I wrote him a simple “Run Extra” order. Then I got the call from the station operator at Waterbury that he’d departed (i.e. I peeked over there). Okay, so sure. Grinchy grin on my face, darkness in my heart, all that. He got about a mile down the tracks and met (cowcatcher to cowcatcher) the first westbound passenger train of the day. So, emergency stopping or smoldering bodies scattered down […]