orlando – Page 8 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

August 11, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O – 8/9/2025

he only real problem of engaging in two operation sessions (one with the Orlando Society of Model Railroaders) and the second a Saturday Night Session, is the number of husband points it costs me (just wrote a check for 500,000 points). But it was worth it. I wasn’t sure how many we’d get for a standard session on a Saturday night. A lot of us were still dragging from the three-and-a-half hour session we’d just gotten through. So there we were at Culvers, sucking down food and rebuilding our energy. And to my amazement, more members came, and more, until […]

August 29, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O – 8/27/2025

here is a story I read years ago. Deathrow. On one side of the aisle, there is a brute of a man, stupid and blunt. On the other, “The Professor”, an intelligent yet ruthless killer. Tonight, the Professor is going to the chair. A priest stands clear of the bars between the cells, administering to the doomed man’s needs. But the Professor ignores him, facing the far wall, pushing against it, stopping, pushing, stopping. Ignored, the priest asks him why he is doing that. The Professor tells him that he cannot press through the wall because his molecules are colliding […]

September 22, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O – 9/20/2025

o even though we ran as guests on the Orlando Society of Model Railroad’s layout earlier that day, and even though we have Club ops next Wednesday, sure, let’s run a Saturday Night Special! We lucked out – Matthew was there to take West Side DS (and Zack backed him on East), Bob Xmas ran the full yard on his own, and Steve V-ball came out of nowhere to “coach” Calypso. We even tossed HO Tom into the furnace job (he ran stack 1) and pushed newbie Horacio onto SB2 (a great passenger run since (A) it’s early and (B) […]

September 25, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O – 9/24/2025

ig John strode towards his idling units, his boots crunching on the mix of cinders and coal, the tinny towers of Champion Mine thrusting into the narrow sliver of post-midnight stars. He clambered aboard his lead NS unit, checking brake pressure to the long cut of loaded hoppers strung behind his four road engines. As he pumped off the brakes, he could hear the cars behind him groan as they eased down the minor slope, bunching against his lashup. He ignored this as he worked his radio, getting a warrant from the dispatcher. Upslope, he could see the lights of […]

October 24, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O – 10/22/2025

ast night was Night of the living Utes* And I gotta say, our young members really shined. I was back in the office, running Western Subdivision to Luke’s Eastern Subdivision. And how refreshing it was. After my last session on the P&WV (with the operator’s inability to run dependable warrant-operations (no reflection on the host. This was really his crew’s inattentiveness)), it was great to run with a club that’s been doing warrants for years and know how to do it. Everyone was quick with the read-backs, almost everyone called in at yards and clearing off the division, and nobody […]

November 2, 2025

OpsLog – OSRR – 11/1/2025

can’t explain it. We’d agreed to coming out for another session at ORSS (Orlando Society of Model Railroads). My ONT guys had casually chatted about it a week or so before. But when it came time for trains, everyone forgot. I’d told my wife that I, strangely, had the day off and we could do something maybe. Then I looked at the cullender at 11am and realized, oh shit! Had a session to attend. And of course that really pissed her off. “Be back at 4pm, honey! See ya! Bye!” Got to their clubhouse and realize I was the only […]

November 27, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O – 11/26/2025

ecently we ran out pre-Thanksgiving operation session, a chance to escape the ravages of relatives, and to have fun running trains before having to listen to your drunk uncle explain why the Earth is flat over the ruins of the feast. We had a pretty good crowd for it – not the usual pre-turkey-packer because of last-minute cancellations, but it was still enough to run all that needs-to be-ran and have fun with all that can be fun. But in flying over the confusion in my dispatchocopter, I realized how much I have to be thankful for. To wit- Thankful […]

December 18, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O – 12/17/2025

ears back in the 60s, there was a term on everyone’s lips (there were no feeds then) – “Generation Gap”. As it was, until the 50s, kids and teenagers were seen as simply “young adults”. They wore the same clothing, cut their hair the same, and the only men (and no women) with tattoos were in in the Merchant Marine. But then the 50s came, and you had “Rebel without a cause”. Teens started thinking about riding motorcycles, greasing up their hair, and not asking for their parent’s permission (By God!). Then the 60s came and the Gap was […]

January 13, 2026

ShowLog – Deland – 1/(10-11)/2026

ur report actually begins a day earlier. Our club has recently dipped our rail joiners into T-Trak. It’s very easy and popular (and a hell of a lot simpler than them wooden Trojan horses we built in our N-Trak days). So the evening pre-show, Shannon and Zeus (two n-trak knuckleheads) were out at the fairgrounds setting up. It went together pretty easy (even though there was a case of elevated curves being installed backwards, turning them into escape-velocity curves). But the new layout was pretty much up and running in time for the show. That being said, the show went […]

January 18, 2026

OpsLog – OSMR – 1/17/2026

ears back, I used to ride by bike over to Dick Sturm’s house to either work on his layout or run ops. It wasn’t a long ride, about two miles if that, but it was nice to ride home on cold winter nights after playing with trains. Anyway, wiggled an invite with the Orlando Society of Model Railroaders for a Saturday session and decided to ride over – this time the ride was seven and change, with the worst part on their end (a quarter mile on Aloma sidewalks, with all sorts of traffic. Anyway, made it there safely and they […]