John – Page 3 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

December 25, 2022

The End of All Things (Review)

ell, Scalzi wrapped up the Old Man’s War series with a satisfying conclusion. What more can I say? We went into this with the the alien confederation, the Conclave, and the humans represented by the Colonial Union (the Earth, pissed off at being a sole supplier of soldiers and colonists, forms a weak yet dangerous third party to this anger-triangle). The universe is now soaked in gasoline and the mysterious group, the Equilibrium, is trying to light it on fire and bring everyone down. Sorta sounds like the world today. So we start on a disturbing note – we know […]

April 2, 2023

A Princess of Mars (Review)

his one really takes me back to my teens. I’d read a couple of John Carter books. Back then, the game shops (remember those?) all had rulebooks for Mars battles, and Mars lead miniatures. And then you had Frank Frazetta pumping out erotic, exciting art of John Carter and his crazy adventures… And now what do we have? A movie made by one studio to try to topple the franchise of another (in this case, the juvenile StarWars). Actually, the movie wasn’t all that bad, and they did their best to follow the storyline. But movies are movies and books […]

April 16, 2023

OpsLog – VSW – 4/15/2023

here are a thousand (well, maybe a hundred) stories that happen in the usual ops session. Since I’m sealed away in the dispatcher’s office, I only see a handful of them. I do know about the Post Switcher leaving Norton Yard and working for a half hour on my mainline (that from the superintendent). And there is that train out of Erlanger that came up the super collider helix at a high rate of speed, blowing out of the topside tunnel portal like a bullet from a rifle, overrunning his authority limits and nearly torpedoing an L&N train crossing the […]

December 3, 2023

Never Surrender (Review)

icked this up – as usual – at the local used bookstore and it was quite the find. Never Surrender tells the history of the relationship between the British, German and French governments between World War One to World War Two, and specifically Winston Churchill’s efforts to keep England in the fight and not surrender to the fascists. Specifically, it zooms in on 1940, with the fall of France and the beginning of the Battle of Britain (when England literally stood alone). It’s quite a breathtaking time when you think about it, and how the world could have been forever […]

January 5, 2024

OpsLog – VSW – 1/4/2024

om Wilson could easily play the role of Father Christmas with his warm grin and twinkling eyes. So that is why we find him in an huge stuffed easy chair before a roaring fire. In his lap is a large book. “Tonight, Children,” he says with an smile so infectious, it could be an STD in The Villages, “I shall read you a story. It is called, The Tale of the Two Dispatchers.” So there once was a land with two dispatchers, the Virginia Southwestern. The Southern dispatcher ran a line staffed with merry country people who ran their trains […]

March 18, 2024

OpsLog – VSW – 3/16/2024

once read a book – Goshawk Squadron – about a maniacal squadron commander in World War One who is drilling his men to be killers. Even in a lazy afternoon aerial drill, his pilots try to get close and pop a couple of shots his way, only to dive clear when he swings towards them. Nobody knows if he’ll shoot back or what. It’s like kittens fighting when the claws come out. Today’s session on the Virginia South Western was like that. No matter what went wrong and what delays we faced, everyone tried to pop a couple of shots […]

May 26, 2024

OpsLog – VSW – 05/25/2024

uite a day over at the Virginia SouthWestern. It was great to have four members there – all in our yellow shirts! we looked like some sort of Japanese anime super-group – “N-Trak Avengers ASSEMBLE!” Also present were two old-time members, Bob M and Frankie Z. Good to see the old group reformed, ready to show these HO guys how we do things! Kinda a bit of a bracer, to sit in the L&N hotseat and get ready to do dispatcher magic. So much is weighing on this – if I mess up, everyone will know (so much for that […]

November 17, 2024

OpsLog – VSW – 11/16/2024

his wasn’t my best idea – going over to Polk City to run the Virginia Southwestern when I also had a Saturday Night Ops session at the club later. So I’d be dispatching for, let’s see, eight hours (and on the road for three). And all that model railroading and I wouldn’t touch a throttle. Still, I do enjoy dispatching. We approached the VSW with the same caution that sappers would an unexploded bomb. Last time on this railroad, everything blew up and the session ended with a critical staging area dead. The only reason we were able to run […]

January 13, 2025

OpsLog – VSW – 1/9/2025

usy weekend for me. The Protorails convention is going on but I cannot attend since I’ll be managing a two day display setup of our sectional layout in Deland. But as part of the convention, they sold spots on both the Virginia Southwestern and the Pittburgh & West Virginia. I ended up to getting invited to a double dose of dispatching, running the railroads from back rooms, sight unseen – ignore the man behind the curtain. And first up; John Wilkes’ VSW. I gotta say that I love this railroad (or rather, two railroads, the L&N (the busy stressful line) […]

March 23, 2025

OpsLog – L&N – 3/22/2025

t was such a nice morning. Came out of the house as the sun broke over the trees, breath steaming in the cold as I made my way to the car. Swung by the coffee shop to pick up a cup. Dropped by Zach’s place to mailbag him for the ride out – an informal meeting of the ONT Operations Committee. Happy to say while we rode out, we might have cracked the steel mill output dilemma, as well as tidying up the freight flow across our club’s bridge route. Time for a quick meal in Wendy’s before heading over […]