Thank you all so much for all the well wishes, and all my best to you and yours for the new year. You guys are the greatest!!!

I saw posts and likes from a number of unfamiliar people, perhaps newcomers or just previously lurkers. Either way, welcome aboard to year six of this long trip on the Twin Cities Central. If anyone is feeling really ambitious, they can always go back and see how far we've come in all that time. Even I have to do it once in a while to remind myself.

We're only four days into the new year, and a couple things are already getting me more excited about trains than I have been the last couple months. One of my doctors has another patient that has access to BNSF calendars, and they always give him one which hangs on the wall in his office. I love seeing the pictures each month. This year they gave him a second 2019 specifically for me which I got back in November. Yesterday, he gave me the 2018.

My wife has taken up watercolor painting, just a few months in, and she's gotten kind of good at it. She flipped through the calendar, and decided to try her hand at doing a train. I sat down with her to pick colors after she traced the image from the photo. Here's what she came up with. Not bad for a first attempt really. Trains are difficult subject matter, especially for the "soft"medium of watercolor.

Another thing that has gotten me wound up recently is, forum member Clem K's video of his 200' freight train going around his layout. If you've never tried to run a long train, you may not totally appreciate the magnitude of this feat. Sad to say, it takes a lot to impress me these days. This one does. You can read the topic HERE.

Lastly, my NMRA division meeting is coming up next Saturday. Last May I became the Assistant Superintendent of the division. In August the Sup was having family issues, and was unavailable, so I picked up the ball at the board meeting, and ran with it, setting the programs and contests for this year. I'm really excited about this next one on static grass. I bought all the stuff to do it, hoping to get some of it on the layout for the convention, but never did. Now I have a week to figure it out so I can help present the topic It reminds me of an old joke: What do you have to know to teach a dog tricks? confused More than the dog. I've been watching YouTube videos. Gotta get my hands dirty now.

One highlight of 2018 that I neglected to mention in the update was the small gathering of forum members Paul2, Darlander and Ray Marion back in July. I held a picnic to coincide with Menard's first annual train show in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, about 60 miles away. A good time was had by all, and the plan is to do it again this July. I didn't take any pictures of the gathering, but fortunately everyone else did and shared them here. The link is just the first of a few posts, so you'll want to scroll down a bit to see the rest

Most of the time I address everyone who posts individually, but there are so many today, I'm just going to take a few. I love you all, and hope you can forgive me if I don't reply directly.

Roman - One of my many loyal readers, good to see you back.

Mike - Yeah, well, the Vikings. I knew they were toast just from looking at the schedule. They were so inconsistent. The local news had a viewer poll grading the season. D's and F's were the top vote getters. rolleyes

Ray - That Masonite building idea started off with Chugman, when he needed to fill in a gap in a block of buildings. I kicked it up a notch by gluing strips and small pieces together to form a huge wall with windows for one of my mills. I did a separate topic on this here.

Butch - If the forum had a "spoilers" feature I would have used it for the hospital story, but I thought the white text was a neat trick. I'm keeping that one in my bag for special occasions in future posts.

Again guys, I don't think I could do all this without all your support.