Trackside Treasure's Eighth Anniversary

Another year has come and gone and I'm still hitting the 'Publish' button every week here at Trackside Treasure headquarters. Some headquarters! It's a lawn chair, a TV table and a chipped coffee mug. It's not eating for days (OK, minutes) while doing prototype research. It's my family forgetting who I am, then finding me asleep with a Morning Sun Books volume in my cramped hands (not the Penn Central in Color Volume 2. That is such a joke. Black is not a color!) It's stacks of books, dog-eared little 110-format photos, and notebooks full of such scribblings, good ideas and jotted numbers that makes Russell Crowe's blackboard in 'A Beautiful Mind' look like a cocktail napkin.

Maybe not Russell Crowe. Maybe I'm a Denzel Washington kind of blogger. A George Clooney type of blogger? A Clive Owen blogger with a northern English accent? No, I'm more like a half-baked Roberto Begnini at the Oscars for 'Life is Beautiful'. Euphorically jumping on auditorium seats with unbridled enthusiasm as the just-born post enters cyberspace and finds it way to your screen! 

And here it is eight years on. I've punched the Publish button four hundred and twenty five times. Many more posts are in the can. No blogger is an island, however. Let's remember:

• Blog partners in my sidebar that are so polished, so prolific, so professional that I may just need a bigger sidebar. 
• Commenters who consistently, comedically, collaboratively add to posts. 
• Running Extra items that runneth over. 
• Contributors that kick it. 
• Readers who devour it. 
• Casual observers who, well, you know, observe it casually. 

They all count and are counted on. If I am granted the good health, the good sense, the good judgment, the good coffee and a carved-out corner of cyberspace in which to consistently cobble together cognizance, I'll keep at it. Though blog tracking software is somewhat irrelevantly inaccurate, sometimes it's fun to see which internet searches lead to Trackside Treasure. Here are today's:

Entry	Pageviews
atlas corn syrup tank cars	2
budd car stationed at agincourt yard	2
cp rail 4242	2
industrial building spur n	2
model railway kingston sub	2
trackside	2
belleville via station	1
cn piggyback	1
cp brockville sub	1
ho scale cn rail mow train	1

Thanks to all of you who make this endeavour worthwhile!

I'm a big fan of the  JUMBLE puzzle which appears in our Kingston Whig-Standard each day. Not so much sudoku or crosswords. I've customized two JUMBLE puzzles here. Each one includes scrambled words that you can unscramble. The unscrambled words are all words you would expect to find on Trackside Treasure. There is only one correct unscrambled word for each scrambled word! Assemble the circled letters to form the puzzle answer at the bottom of each. 

Solve one or solve both! Send your completed puzzle answer to mile179kingstonATyahooDOTca and you win the annually-assembled and interestingly-inventoried Trackside Treasure anniversary contest prize pack! There will be one prize awarded per puzzle. Oh, and since you read this far, giant hint follows: check to see if your answer is correct - each answer is already part of the text of this post!

And sincere thanks for being aboard for the ride each and every week on Trackside Treasure!

-Eric

*Legal disclaimer: Not valid in the state of Nebraska or the South American nation of Uruguay. Professional driver on closed course. May cause swelling of the hands and the condition known as 'hot dog fingers'. Does not contain guacamole. Your mileage may vary. Dealer may sell for less. 'Extra cheese' counts as a topping. If condition persists for more than four hours, consult somebody. Anybody.