Milepost 297

It is time for my annual letter to the Jolly One up North. As I mentioned last year, it seems that everyone who writes anything writes one so I must "go with the flow."
A check of last year's letter tells me that the old guy took pretty good care of me. The EM-1 2-8-8-4 magically materialized shortly after my epistle last year. Thank you very much, Mike, for your offer and I was glad I was able to help out with your collection.
Readership is up as I did ask Santa for more readers of this blog. I hope he didn't threaten to give you coal in order for you to stop in from time to time.
Now for this year... I still haven't taken my first shot at a laser kit; I'd like to see one of those under my tree. I've looked long and hard at several of them. Wicked Wanda's looks interesting and I'm thinking that I'm going to have a small section of town on "the wrong side of the tracks." That kit would fit right in I'll bet.
How about still more readers AND some topic suggestions from you? Please feel free to email me at danmerkel@sbcglobal.net with any suggestions that you may have. Yes, you can use the comment section here but I don't know when people have commented; I don't get an email telling me so. Feel free to write to me directly.
A few more hours per week to spend with some friends working on the layout would be nice as well. I've always wanted to get a little "round robin" group going where we could help each other out from time to time. I've learned that this isn't as easy as it sounds. It takes some planning to pull off a successful work session. But I'm willing to try.
I'm always in need of just a few more pieces of Nickel Plate Road rolling stock. Thanks to the nice folks out at Athearn, those of us who model the NKP have been well supplied. Kudos also to AccuRail and Intermountain as they have added nicely to the offerings as well. But more is always merrier they say.
Storage boxes... yes, storage boxes to put railroad "stuff" in. And it would really be nice if they were different sizes but still made to stack on top of each other. It would also be nice if the same style is available later on if I decide that I need a couple more. Right now, I have about half a dozen, but I don't think that more than a couple of them are stackable with each other. When I get a few more, I'll be able to clean up the train room and have all of my railroad stuff organized! (yeah, right!)
Last but not least, I wish for all of you the same as I did last year. I hope you have a few more joys than sorrows, a few more dollars than bills, more better days than bad ones and time to spend with those people that you love and things that you like... and the wisdom to separate the two.
OK Santa, please do your thing!
dlm