Model – Page 6 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

September 19, 2022

OpsLog – TY&E – 9/18/2022

aybreak is just coming up over the low eastern hills. I’m sitting in my TY&E Yellow Perils, idling at in the weedy lot of the Raymond industries, my cut filled with full sand hoppers and empty log cars. The good thing about this is it means I’ll have a semi-loaded train going each way. By organizing the cuts, I can make the ride a lot easier. After all, I’ve done this job forever. While I’m sitting there, some do-gooder track walker comes over, shoots me a withering glance and throws the industrial turnout in front of me to normalized routing. […]

September 23, 2022

On Sheet – Sliver Linings

n our last On Sheet, I just hung out with you all and laughed about some of the funny things I’ve heard during operations. Well, a lot of people liked it and some people discussed aspects of it, but I did get one contact that said that it actually was counter-productive, and that that person might not be so keen to operate if that’s what it was about. Ouch! Classic backfire! So let’s take a step back, way back, and define model train operations. How about this? Model Train Operations are the biggest, greatest co-operative game there is! And that’s […]

September 25, 2022

OpsLog – FEC – 9/24/2022

o it was a strange day on the east coast of Florida. I reported to my FEC tower outside Hialeah Yard for my shift dispatching the FEC. Oddly, the planet Earth was in a wobbling orbit – the sun was up and bright at 4am. The resulting disturbances to the ionosphere crashed all radio efforts. But we had a railroad to run and, by God, we were going to run it. Note of explanation – the room lights were wonky and the radiophones had crashed. The superintendent was pulling his hair to get us into a position to go hot, […]

September 27, 2022

OpsLog – TBL – 09/26/2022

ay what you will about model train ops being stressful, frustrating, and unfun. Whatever. I had to go to the club today to meet an AC repair guy and since Ian is going to blow away our Wednesday night club ops, I had nothing better to do. So I figured I’d run a Monday afternoon session on the Tuscarora Branch Line with just myself. My friend Greg wants to get better at the interlocking position so he agreed to come as well. So after the AC guy recharged our system and dumped a bill on us, we started the clock […]

October 21, 2022

On Sheet – Illusions

n our last On Sheet, I talked about testing out ideas; my example was my interlocking tower and the control levels (specifically the train order boards). And there, I mentioned facing-point locks. I did a lot of digging while researching interlocking controls for my Tuscarora Branch Line. I learned all sorts of curious things about them, some I ignored and some I liked. But one of those neat ones were a device called a facing-point lock. I have two in my interlocking tower; you can see one of the levers (blue) in the foreground/left, and one way in the back/right. […]

October 28, 2022

On Sheet – The Great P&LE Strike!

n our last blog posting, we talked about simulating things that aren’t really there (specifically facing-point locks and various assorted paperworks). The thing is, operations can be more than the trains and the waybills. They can be expanded to include anything you can imagine. Like a violent labor altercation. I mentioned at the end of that On Sheet how you could simulate union dues with your operators (by passing a coffee can around). That got me to thinking about an actual strike I was involved in on a friend’s railroad. My buddy Ed (who passed away a few years back) […]

November 5, 2022

OpsLog – P&WV – 11/4/2022

kay, so we got to run on the Pittsburgh and West Virginia today, a sort of retirees session held in the middle of a Friday when all the good people of the world are working hard (at the car wash or other places of employment). The good thing here was that, unlike our last disappointing session when over half those signing up didn’t bother to show (and our plucky dispatcher found himself in the cab, running trains and watching for headlights), we had a full crew. One guy couldn’t make it but luckily called host Tom Wilson in time for […]

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 […]

November 18, 2022

On Sheet – Running Trains

o, I’m a model railroader. I must run a lot of trains, right? Especially now that I’m retired. Let’s see – on Monday through Thursday, I worked on the Journal Box newsletter for the NMRA (specifically, the Sunshine Region, where I am a member). This is a quarterly publication which I do gratis. Mostly, it’s just a lot of editing work. Monday night was also maintenance night at the club. We installed the new chip in Tuscarora and identified a mistake in the interlocking code. Also, I worked on an MOW siding, changed light bulbs and bagged up the trash. […]

December 5, 2022

OpsLog – FEC – 12/4/2022

he second day of my all-ops weekend played out even better than I could have hoped for. The drive was easy, traffic light. We met a couple of club members at Wendy’s before the session, to chat about the coming effort (one of the members for a newbie, so that helped him (or filled him with horrifying regrets)). And then we went over, met the rest of the bunch and filed out to the two sheds to get things rolling. Kyle was on the panel and I had light road duties, meaning with one train, I stripped out every car […]