railroad – Page 3 – 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 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 30, 2022

Railroad Signalling (Review)

his book came to me through sad circumstances. One of our train club members passed away a while ago and his widow asked if we’d like his train books. What I didn’t know is that there would be two eight-foot shelves packed with books. It took three trips in a loaded Jetta to get them to the club (and yes, club members, I’ll pay for them). Anyway, the guy I was lugging loads with pointed this one out to me – Railroad Signalling by Brian Solomon. Now, I’ve gotten model railroad books about signalling that were kinda meh – all […]

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 […]

December 2, 2022

On Sheet – Quiet Time

recently mentioned the comradery one can get from model railroading (and, specifically, operations). Well, the reverse can be true too. The other night was club night. Got to the dinner joint at 5pm. Talked with the guys and our waitress (our favorite) for an hour or so. Of course, there would be a board meeting for the club after the meal and being secretary, I was there with my computer. Our president (of course, the last guy to show) came in at 6:30 or so. And we talked over our end-of-year financials and congratulated ourselves on our efforts. We brought […]

December 5, 2022

OpsLog – WBRR – 12/3/2022

hings on the Western Bay railroad get better and better. We had a new dispatcher today – he wasn’t all that versed in TT&TO (but who is – I’m giving a clinic at a convention next month on the topic). But he rolled with the punches and did very well. Three of us operated seven stations – I gotta get Al to let us start issuing train orders someday (I’ve got some ideas – also mentioned in my clinic). But otherwise the crews made their meets and switched their cars. The superintendent doesn’t trust them one bit but they are […]

January 22, 2023

OpsLog – TBL – 1/21/2023

fter a long weekend at a train convention (and two weeks of ensuing covid isolation) I was able to return to duty on the Tuscarora. The railroad surgeon cleared me for service. And back I went to the dispatcher’s desk. Also on duty was Kyle (on interlocking), his father Phil (on Scheduled trains) and Greg (on Coal). Yes, so we had a rusty lever-thrower, a rookie on the timetable and a coal guy who forgot how the tally sheet worked. I guess that’s why we ran four hours on the session. Still, Phil (even though he is a model railroader, […]

January 27, 2023

On Sheet – Back to Basics

o you might have read about our crazy op session the other night (detailed and derailed HERE). So it was a tough night – I ran around sweating like a pig, even though my only job (the Shelfton Turn) ran ten feet out, switched in one quick runaround to hit all the trailing turnouts, dropped and came back in to work a short branch run to Iron City Brewery. Total wait time – one and a half hours. Total running time – thirty minutes. Not such a good night. But club fun night wasn’t over. I stayed until 11pm so […]

February 3, 2023

On Sheet – It’s about time!

uestion: Why is there time and space? There is time so that everything doesn’t happen at once, and there is space so that everything doesn’t happen to you. When it comes to time, fast-time in model railroads get a bit of a bum rap. People think that the sole purpose of a fast clock is to generate all sorts of undue stress, like speeding up a production line to make the workers produce more. Poppycock. Time (and fast-time) is nothing more than a measure of where we are at in the operations sequence. If there is stress all around, that’s […]

February 10, 2023

On Sheet – Duties of the guest

veryone always talks about how to set up an op session, and what you need to do as a host. But what about the duties of each and every operator? I wouldn’t have even considered these points if I hadn’t been at sessions where they occurred. Be on time: It is critical to be on time for a session. Jobs are being assigned and the host needs to know where he can put valuable operators. Worse, coming in late means that you are now a major disruption to the flow of the pike. If you are honestly running late because […]