orlando – Page 2 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

January 28, 2021

Opslog – LM&O – 1/27/2021

aybe because we had a lot of familiar faces show up. Or maybe because everyone brought all the things we needed for a good session. Or maybe because the Zanesville Local only had one car to spot. But it was a great night on the LM&O. With Cody on the DS board and Nick in the yard, the railroad organizational staffing was rock solid. Even the newbies (like Braden and his Dad) came prepared, having studied Silver Bullet Two’s timetable and walked the layout, getting a good understanding of what they would be doing. That works for me, since instead […]

March 25, 2021

OpsLog – LM&O – 3/24/2021

he trouble all started when I was working the Mingo interchange, swapping cuts to and from Wheeling. I asked the cub dispatcher for paper to get back to Mingo Jct (I’d already been issued a warrant to get me just to the interchange, rather than the more traditional out-n-backs Cody Case and I rely on). So I said I wanted to go back and he said “here’s yer warrant” and (given the fact that I was working with Teddy, my new engineer on the Mingo Turn, as well as rerailing other trains and pulling toppled engines out of tunnels) I […]

April 29, 2021

OpsLog – LM&O – 4/28/2021

always thought that when you accomplished some amazing feat, you’d feel this near-holy glow radiating from you. However, right now it feels like I levered myself into a dryer, sat a bowling ball on my lap and hit spin. I’m in a daze. When I left the property tonight, I got out to lock the gate and then discovered my car’s push-button start wouldn’t work. I pushed it and pushed it in the dark, only to realize that when I’d got out with the gate lock, I put my keys in my back pocket. So the ops session – from […]

June 24, 2021

OpsLog – LM&O – 06/23/2021

t was a dark and stormy night… Most penny dreadfuls start this way. And our session on the LM&O felt that way. Lots of guests so lots of people jammed everywhere. Turnout failures. Brain failures. Near misses. Arguments. What didn’t happen on the road tonight? My moment of grace was the Shelfton Local. Even under reduced yard limits and warrants, it was a single slip out and another back. I just had an enjoyable time down that branch, switching cars and staying out of everyone’s banana dramas. And, because good things come to good engineers, when I shuffled my cars […]

August 26, 2021

OpsLog – LM&O – 08/25/2021

here are those days where ops doesn’t seem worth it. I knew there was going to be problems when most of the club officers didn’t show up. That means I’m the sole host. I had to get everything ready and was pretty busy, setting up the computer and getting the clocks running (and bringing the phones back online, since we are evidently a club that laughs at death). Since most of the trains were signed up for, I grabbed helpers out of Calypso. Got Dusty Klauck on the front end of 223 and up the hill we went. While Bob […]

October 28, 2021

OpsLog – LM&O – 10/28/2021

eft-seating it in a pair of beat up old C&NW units, rattling down through the spiral tunnel below Harris Glen, running to Lehigh and a possible meet. I’m conducting for a young scout, Aryon. The kid’s got a steady throttle hand and is drifting the helpers down to Calypso nice and easy. The club’s full of people tonight – visitors, a group of boy scouts, lots of people. Most of them have been put on trains as engineers, the guys giving up their throttles to allow newbies to realize that trains are more than just circles of tracks. Trains are […]

December 16, 2021

OpsLog – LM&O – 12/15/2021

ast time we did ops, we got a couple of people to attend and ran a handful of early trains. I groused about it in the blog and nobody liked that move either. This time we decided to pick up at 6am (a quarter of the way into the session) and just run the balance. And now EVERYONE showed up and the layout was jammed. Hopefully you’ll like the blog. So yes, it was a pile on. We ran the rest of the trains, all the passengers (who were probably pissed at the LM&O’s excuses for the horrible service delays […]

December 20, 2021

OpsLog – Wazu – 12/19/2021

ell, we partied like it was 2010 today. By that, I mean we had a room full of enthusiastic operators in a large home (well, clinic) layout, we ran everything and most of the people stayed for the end. Just like our club used to do things. It was an interesting session – I’ve been dispatching at Andy’s for years (across three or four layouts). The Wazu is by far the best, a loose simulation of the UP line from Spokane to Portland. And for this session, I pulled out my new dispatcher program (focused more on being a true […]

January 27, 2022

OpsLog – LM&O – 1/26/2022

t was touch and go whether we’d get enough crew for a session but right before 7:30, the roster filled out. Some us took early trains, some of us had to wait for later trains, and some of us sat and chatted. And from the central table, many an amusing story was recounted. I picked one right off the bat – I’d given a buddy my Zanesville Turn but did the next best, a shakedown run of an express parts train from Mingo Interchange to the LeVasseur Plant. Brought over the cars, pushed them (racks and then long boxes) in […]

April 17, 2022

OpsLog – LM&O (Night Ops) – 4/16/2022

t’s 8:15am in the Cincinnati rail yards. I’ve got some SP F3’s coupled to the 244 consist (and some geeps stuck in, since my slow-rollers wouldn’t even get them out of the yard in my test pulls while waiting for go-time). But lights are on, engines are rumbling, we’re good to go. At half-past, two blasts of the horn and I’m pushing hard, fixed on making Carbon Hill for my first meet of the day. The F-units, one time my pride, are really running bad. They seem to need a warm up session to get them moving. By the time […]