railroad

September 12, 2025

OpsLog – YVRR – 9/11/2025

o it was going to be a busy day – up at 7am. A run over to TRF Hobbies in Melbourne to pick up a gift card for the club Christmas Party. Lunch somewhere (McDonalds, it turned out, but nice anyway). And that evening, I’d have to open the club for the HO committee because nobody’s bothered to get a key (that will change). Turns out while I was there, I mopped, swapped out a dead overhead light and cleaned the toilet bowl (ugh. Some of you need to fit sights on your peters for better aiming). So with all […]
November 6, 2025

OpsLog – YVRR – 11/4/2025

here were two great things that happened on Tuesday, November 4th. I had a very pleasant drive out the Cocoa Beach, Florida. Plenty of time, Micky-D lunch with a book, even a McFlurry. Got to Jack F’s house a bit early so I walked around the park until the ops session start time and then I showed up. And the second thing was that, when we started the session on the Yosemite Valley RR and John L was bringing the first train from offroad, I realized I was now familiar with the railroad to anticipate how the yard works (yes, […]
February 15, 2026

With the Slack, That Will Do, and other railroad stories (Review)

‘m not an engineer or dispatcher; I play them at my model train club. Like factory work, like small shops, the modern world has pushed railroad engineering from its glory days into an un-fun, by-the-book, management-conflicting job (like everything else). I know that from my computer programming career – I went from doing entire projects freehand down to daily reporting and dull methodologies in the span of my forty years. And, like Charles H. Geletzke Jr, I’m glad I was there for the waning days of it, and now I’m glad I’m out. But enough about our world. The author […]