Model – Page 8 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

March 18, 2023

OpsLog – CSX Taft – 03/17/2023

y order of the dispatcher, I’d dismounted from my CSX switch engine and walked down the industrial siding. A flat car was being worked by a crew off a remote loading dock. Then an off-spot box car. And then the center of the crisis, an industrial loading dock. At it sat a boxcar and a reefer, the latter’s refrigerator engine running with nobody home to unload it. The Brotherhood of Knuckledraggers 107 had walked off the job. And worried about the time this car could run off it’s internal tanks, the railroad had set me down to check it out. […]

March 20, 2023

OpsLog – WAZU – 3/19/2023

ith a combination of sweet-talking and blackmail, I managed to get Kyle to take the DS seat on the WAZU Line and fly into the maelstrom of mother-may-I, controlling the sprawling, confusing, and statically-cracking division. Me, I got to run trains (which I do every couple of months). So, with my new-found freedom, I busted out of Hinkle Yard (four fast-minutes early; you’d think Yardmaster Sparky was having a baby; such screaming). It was a quick run to Umatilla and after some quick switching, a quicker run down to Walla Walla. And that was fun – a long siding with […]

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 […]

April 27, 2023

OpsLog – LM&O – 4/26/2023

t was the end of a long month for me – nearly broke my neck and possibly ending up dead, paralyzed, or worse. Overall, it was as if I’d been bashed over the head with a slab of asphalt. While it’s getting better, it still hurts. And my dispatcher-in-training become an employee-in-awol, with the club placing second to Disney, of all things. I’d just wanted to maybe find a small local to curl up for the evening with, just bumping boxcars about. Instead, I had to run the main office, routing trains and keeping things right. To make matters worse, […]

April 28, 2023

On Sheet – String Theory

e’ve talked all about simulating how trains run, how timetables are read and how TT&TO, Warrants, all those things work. But there you are in your layout room, looking at your yards and staging tracks, your passing sidings and goods yards, and you find yourself thinking, “So just how do I figure out a timetable in the first place?” The answer, my friend, are String Diagrams. From a posting or two blogs ago, an online friend noted that he uses a string diagram to run his railroad. I’ve even mentioned that I use something very much like a string diagram […]

May 6, 2023

On Sheet – Pilgrimage

ust letting you blog-followers know I won’t be around next week. I’m going on a pilgrimage. See, twice a year I gotta help my mom snowbird between North Carolina (in the middle of frigging nowhere) and Daytona Beach (too much not nowhere). It’s what oldest sons do (but my sister can fill in in a pinch). Anyway, this time (going up), I’m spending a few days traveling around Ohio and Pennsylvania. The former is family obligations, the latter is to see my layout in living, breathing greatness. When we first set up the Tuscarora, I said I wanted it based […]

May 25, 2023

OpsLog – LM&O – 5/24/2023

hey came from beyond high orbits, disk-like vessels that slid into the atmosphere, nudging past Chinese spy balloons, descending over an unsuspecting America. On their steel underbellies, access ports irised open and the cold muzzles of alien devices slid forth, tracking along the faint railline running across the eastern mountains. These were no deathrays, no, nor atomizers or any one of traditional alien destructo-beams. These were capture rays, used to pluck fishermen out of rowboats and yahoos out of cornfields. The aliens had come with capture on their vast, cool, unsympathetic minds. Their plans were carefully considered. The first beam […]

May 26, 2023

On Sheet – TimeFable

lot of layout owners, when they start setting up for ops, build a timetable. Sure, it’s fun since now all those trains have numbers, go places, do things. But is it necessary? Yes, a timetable can allow you to make sure your flow works, that there are enough sidings for trains to meet, do work and whatnot. You can build sequential operations out of a timetable. And, of course, you can hang it on the wall and smile at it. But if you are running your railroad under warrants, CTC (centralized traffic control, i.e. with signals) or mother-may-I (verbal orders […]

June 2, 2023

On Sheet – It’s your railroad

n last week’s On Sheet blog, I went after the misuse of timetables (you can read it HERE). And it struck a bit of a nerve with some people. Discussed it online (at length) and when I got to the club, it came up a few more times. In my defense, I was just musing about the use (and misuse) of timetables. Sure, they are necessary (an evil?) in Time Table and Train Orders. It’s the backbone of how the entire thing works. If you’ve run TT&TO, then you know about holding in a siding, orders in one hand, timetable […]

June 4, 2023

OpsLog – WBRR – 06/03/2023

he teletype was idly clicking a slow message, a new dispatcher getting an OS report from Navajo down the line about a train coming east. Since I’m at Dulce, I shouldn’t even see that train – he’ll swing off my line at Ute Junction and head to the other division, through Placerville and Dolores. But really, it’s not my problem. I’m checking over the paperwork of a westbound peddler train standing in my station, ready to depart. Yes, it looked good. I don’t remember what pulled me away from my Dulce job. With long arms and a sneaky manner, I […]