Had a ball steaming up with folks from the Bay Area, Southern California, Nevada, and elsewhere. Interesting weekend, many live steamers. It was in fact too much fun to be able to meet some new steamers from other areas. For example, Sonny Wizelman had a most amazing Aster Grasshopper rebuild complete with mining train. I signed up four more members for BAGRS Live Steamers, one from Sparks, NV who promises to descend on one of our events with his Climax-loving buddies. Many of the LA crowd said that they could easily be convinced to attend one of our steamups so we'll have to apply some thumb screws there. Also, there was much talk of finding some completely out-of-touch-with-reality-hotel-owner in the Bay Area to host a couple of hundred alcohol toting, butane firing, grease rag carrying live steamers for a three day indoor/outdoor event in May or June. Don't hold your breath but there was a flash of creativity that was sustained by a small group on this topic for more than 30 minutes so we'll see if a wild-fire starts... or maybe even a low grade smoldering brush fire.

Mike Martin's Project working hard!

Mike demonstrates proper form.

LA steamer Sonny Wizelman.

Sam Muncy knocks the ashes off of his cigar.

I must inform you that Gary Broeder and Tom King are putting us all to shame. They pulled up the old code 500 (or whatever it was... it was HUGE) track on our layout, laid down some sort of rubber road bed and completed one loop plus a siding of Gary's code 215 1:20 scale track. Gary and Tom have arranged it so that a second loop can be added and I promise to make myself available to assist in this effort. Now, raise your hand and say out loud "I (BAGRS Live Steamer) do solemnly promise that we will never again require Gary and Tom to build (rebuild) our GROUP track all by themselves." The track is really looking good and has good space to accommodate steaming and queuing of locomotives. Gary is head of the track committee and I think that expansion plans are in the works. We'll rely on Gary to get more information to us so we can pull together a track gang.

BAGRS Live Steamers Calendar (subject to change):

January 17-19: National Gauge One Steamup, Diamondhead Mississippi. More live steaming in an indoor atrium than your lungs deserve!
February: Date is TBD. Working day at Gary Broeder's to "elaborate" on our current tracks. I'll bet we can also sneak in some cool running during the day on Gary's railroad.
March 22nd: Steamup on the Morgan Creek Railroad at Richard Finlayson's. (The Goldfysh & Whymsy runs on a shared right-of-way.) Weather permitting. Portable track will be available in addition to my single track 2.5' minimum radius railroad. Kids welcome! (5' minimum radius if you're a point-to-loop boomerang sort of live steamer.)