I'm sitting here sipping on a good whiskey, and am getting a little melancholy. I joined this forum in August 2007. My Dad had passed away December 2006; I was still healing. He was retired from the N&W and I got the notion that I would like to collect examples of each of the N&W Steam Locomotives.
This forum provided me the opportunity to meet numerous Internet friends. Without this forum, we most likely would never know of each other's existence. And, we are all getting older. Since 2007 there have been a lot of good, and decent people that are no longer with us. With increasing frequency, we see threads titled "Anyone heard from….", or "Tragic Loss!!..........", or "Is …… ok?" Or, we open a thread and see "I haven't seen ….on the forum for quite some time".
Germaine to the topic of toy trains or not, it is part of our humanity. We care for one another. Even if we have never met face-to-face, friendships develop. We pray, and shed tears at the loss of a friend's spouse, or upon learning of a serious illness. In the meantime, we sit behind our keyboards and share our experiences with toy trains and our lives.
When the day comes that weeks or months have passed, I would like to think that someone would ask, "Has anyone heard from Gilly lately"? In the meanwhile, we will continue to check in on the OGR Forum every day, or so.
Thank you to OGR Magazine for providing us with this Forum to interact, and become internet friends. This forum is about much more than a magazine, or toy trains. It's about people too.
I'll shut up now and turn back to the NCAA Basketball Tournament.
God bless you all.
