Guess Who's 5?

That kind of crept up on me. 

It was 5 years ago today that the first post appeared on look4trains.com. I've made it a tradition to wish myself happy birthday each year, and I figured why not do it at least one more time? Here's 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012. 

In the past I have done a bit of a round up in each of these posts, looking back over the past 12 months. There's less to look back on this year than in the past. My posting rate has dropped way off, partially compliments of a job change and move which greatly reduced my railfanning time along with resulting in the destruction of my previous layout. I've had to start over, and at times it has been slow. Matter of fact, the 9 posts I have made this year are fewer than lots of months in past years. 

I still enjoy sharing occasional stories in this venue, although it's become more common to share photos on flickr or facebook, which reduces the amount of blogging material I have. 

Here are some fun facts about look4trains.com. As of the time of this writing, blogger says there have been almost 74,000 pageviews. The all time most popular post was "What is ATCS?" from 2009, which is responsible for nearly 1000 of those views all by itself. The second most popular post features a photo of some great railfanning friends at the Granite City Train Show: "When They Say the World's Greatest Hobby". The total post count is up to somewhere around 420. 

This hobby continues to be about people more than anything. One of the great blessings of the past year for me has been getting to know more railfans and modelers. I really feel that I have been welcomed to the Twin Ports area and can't overstate how much I appreciate that welcome. I certainly miss Wadena and the Staples Sub but the guys around here make up for it. On the plus side, hopefully I can round up a bunch of fans to bring to Verndale this year and add some Duluth/Superior flavor to that annual get-together. 

A new job has greatly reduced the amount of time I spend along the tracks, although I do get to see the occasional lake boat out the office window now. I never realized quite how lucky I was to have the chance to combine work with pleasure, but now I do. It does make the time I get to spend along the tracks now even more special. 

On the modeling front, progress has been slow but steady. It will take years before I get to the point I was when I tore down my last layout (I'm a slow worker) but the journey is enjoyable and that's the important part. 

Finally, I am still blessed with a Mrs. L4T who is willing to humor my desire to "train hunt", sometimes by accompanying me, and other times by letting me run off on the spur of the moment and stay out longer than I told her I would. For her patience and understanding I will always be thankful. 

PS: I am still taking some train pictures. One from last Saturday:

And here's one from today, spotted on the way home from work and shot after a short detour down the interstate:

Til next time, keep looking!

It's That Time Again

Happy birthday to look4trains.com. This is birthday number 4, and I think post number 377.

So what happened over the last 12 months? Some events that I remember:

-Outside Red Wing, on a hot summer evening
-My Ebro introduction
-One of many photos that were made following a heads up from Jer
-Entertainment, courtesy of the Wadena Local crew
-The day I got a lash of 7 '40's facing the sun
-Due to the lack of snow, we had to settle for frost
-The day we explored the jungle-also known as the day of VR2K11. The entire day was awesome, even without westbounds. Can't wait for the bigger and better VR2K12, less than two months away now!

One thing I noticed in going through the posts-there are a lot more on modeling than ever before. Modeling is becoming a more important part of my life, and that has led to a reduction in railfanning. I'm not sure if this is good or bad (it's expensive!) but I enjoy it. Railfanning has been and will continue to be a big part of my life, but that section of the Staples Sub between Staples and Perham is getting worn out for me, unless the train, the company, or the weather/light are out of the ordinary.

According to Google Analytics, this blog has entertained more than 50,000 page views. My hope is that those visitors have enjoyed reading it at least a fraction as much as I have enjoyed sharing it. If they did, they have had a blast. I'm betting I will be writing another one of these in a year.

Thanks to everyone who visits this blog.

Happy Birthday to L4T.com

Once again we have reached that special day of the year-the day that commemerates the birth of look4trains.com. Since I remembered to post on the first birthday and the second birthday of the website, it seemed like ending the tradition this year would be wrong.

And it's been another good year in the L4T world. Loads of trains, including some memorable ones, along with a lot of good memories of time spent with railfanning friends. The past year has also seen me re-infected with the modeling bug (thanks Ian and Chris!) and I have been spending more time in the basement and not quite as much time along the tracks as a result. It's still railfanning to me, though, whether I'm watching the real thing or a 1/87th rendition. Which sort of brings me to the point of tonight's post.

I'm sitting in a hotel in Duluth, glancing out the window occasionally at weather that looks like it would rather snow than rain, longing for home. To kill some time on this trip I threw some plastic, cement, and a couple of tools in a box before leaving home. Tonight I finished work and decided to get on with building that elusive DEEX coal gon that I have always wanted. Here's my workspace:


Obviously it takes me no time to mess up a desk something awful. That must mean I'm working, though, right? Just to prove that it's not all a set-up, a picture of the plastic box I've managed to cobble together to this point:


Actually, some of this work was done last night, after I finished my presentation for this morning. I snuck in about an hour of modeling then, and after answering my emails from today, set to work once more, this time trying to concoct an underframe for my budding work of art:


Now I'm setting here trying to picture how the trucks and couplers will fit onto this contratption. A sneaking suspicion that extensive cutting and filing will be required is creeping into my head, but what the heck, it's not like I've ever done this before so getting it right the first time would seem almost criminal anyway.

So happy birthday, look4trains, and most of all, thanks to the people that read and comment on these stories. It's sure fun for me to look back over the years and relive some of the experiences in my head. Here's hoping for many more years of enjoyable trainwatching and commenting. In ten more years, this website will be a teenager. Maybe I'll keep doing this for that long. Who knows?

A look4trains.com Birthday Celebration

A few weeks ago I had a feeling that I had been doing this blog thing for quite some time and checked back to see when I had made my first post. Turns out it was April 26, 2008, when I rolled this blog out and decided to share some railfan observations on an irregular basis.

About the time I started the blog, I also set up a sitemeter account to track the traffic I was getting. After a few months a sitemeter problem led me to switch over to Google Analytics, which is what I have been using since August 1, 2008. I thought I would share some of the stats with my few faithful readers.

How do people find this site? Well, just over 50% of the 3238 visits (since August 1) have been from referring sites-the most common of which is groups.yahoo.com, which makes sense given how closely linked this site has been with the Outstate Minnesota Rail group. The next most common referrer is railroadradio.net, followed by google and a couple of qstation sites. Also in the top ten are Trains magazine message board, trainorders.com, and trainspotter-usa.com (thanks Ian!). johnfladung.net is just behind, in 12th place, so thanks for your link as well, John.

As of this morning there have been 8965 page views since the blog was established. I don't have detailed info from the sitemeter days, but since last August 1st, the most viewed pages have been: the home page first, obviously, followed in order by a post about DEEX coal cars, my Valentine's Day post from this year, a post on an SD70 confab in Staples, and my first coal car post, about BN and BNSF cars.

Has this been worth doing? For me, the answer is a definite yes. For one thing, Mrs. L4T likes to read about her part in the look4trains fact-finding outings. It also has helped me to share information with other people who have similar interests. Railfanning in a small Minnesota town can be a solitary pursuit, but the internet has helped people with similar interests to make contact with each other, share information, and develop friendships. Hopefully this blog has contributed in some small way to that goal.

So, after 72 posts, thousands of photos sorted through to try and find something interesting enough to post, and a lot of good memories, what does the future hold? More of the same. I plan to keep shooting train photos, sharing them occasionally, and trying to tell semi-entertaining stories about railfanning along the Staples Sub and sometimes other places. Thanks to everyone who reads this blog, and especially to those of you that take the time to comment, either on the blog, on a mailing list or message board, or by email. I would probably do this if no one ever responded, for my own enjoyment, but hearing from people who read this junk makes it a lot more fun. And that's what a hobby should be, in the end. Fun.

Jim, out.