Trackside Treasure Fourth Anniversary

Four years ago, I fired up the scanner, dug out some photos and notes, and set up a tiny corner office in the cyberspace skyscraper. I called it Trackside Treasure.  While it's fun to facetiously throw around terms like Trackside Treasure Global Headquarters, the total workforce and workspace has not changed...me and a laptop.  What has changed is the community that seems to have developed here.

I'm very wary of statistics.  Having said that, pageviews total 158,000+ in Blogger's stats page, with 31 entries posted in 2012.  While the pageview graph doesn't exactly peak like the Matterhorn, it does resemble the foothills of the Rockies or perhaps the hogsback profile of parts of CN's Kingston Sub.  Readership is a two-thirds majority Canadian contingent, a large American audience, surprisingly strong (g'day mate !) Australian attendance, then Europe does the rest.  This blog has also given me a springboard to another blog featuring both my current book on VIA Rail and an upcoming second volume. (Working title is Trackside with VIA...Viapalooza. I sure hope I come up with something better!)

Thank you...to everyone who comments.  A blog without comments is like a tree with no leaves; it exists but it doesn't show signs of life or growth.  Thank you...to everyone who reads, even once in awhile.  I hope you find something that interests you.  Thank you...to everyone who's learned something, me included.  This exercise continues to be educational for me, and as the old saying goes, 'The more you know, the more you realize you don't know.'  Thank you...to everyone who makes it fun and takes the information seriously, but not ourselves too seriously.

Thanks also go to my blog partners, featured in my sidebar: Adam, Chris L., Chris M., Chris V., Dave, Jason C., Jason S., John, Matt, Robert, Scott and Steve, and TOTW.  You guys provide me with my daily scan of the prototype railroading and model railroading worlds, interesting reads, captivating photos and video, truly a panoply of topics unparallelled in the blogosphere.  

Now for our anniversary tradition...the Trackside Treasure anniversary contest.  This year, in honour of my Youtube ID, it's all about CN/VIA's E-series. (Top photo - Ernestown passes through Portage la Prairie, Manitoba after I disembarked from Roomette 8 in Winnipeg in August, 1981. Porter and passengers enjoy a vestibule view of Portage.)  I've rounded up some potential names of these VIAiconic eight duplex roomette-four double bedroom-four section sleepers for you to sort through.  Now here's the catch, before you rush to your Canadian Trackside Guides, copies of Trackside with VIA - The First 35 Years, or your handheld Google-boxes.  Only four of the names are real.  The others I stole or dreamed up after one too many cups of coffee.  Here's how it works:

1. Find the four real E-series names. But wait a minute - what is this, some kind of church basement cake raffle?  We need a skill-testing element here.

2. Once you  find the four real ones, arrange them so that...the last letter of each, when arranged in the correct order, forms a word.  What kind of word? Well, it's a four-letter word associated with a celebration like a birthday, anniversary or...something someone left out in the rain...and I'll never have that recipe again.

3. Either by email to mile179kingstonATyahooDOTca, or as a comment at the end of this post, simply include this four-letter word, along with your four correct E-series names. The first reader to send all four correct names and the celebration four-letter word WINS!

Good luck!  Bonne chance! The winner will receive the occasionally-coveted Trackside Treasure Prize Pack, a closely-guarded secret assemblage of stuff I hope you'll like.  Now, here are the aforementioned potential sleeper names, all brought to you by the letter E and the numbers 8-4-4:

Echo, Enderby, Escuminac, Eston, Ecum Secum, Eden, Ethel, Eastville, Endive, Electra, Eagle Pass, Elderbank, Elderberry, Erindale, Entrance, Eganville, Evergreen, Eatonia, Ebenezer, Enrique Iglesias, Erin Mills, Eastvale, Etobicoke, Edith Cavell, Ectopic, Edmund Fitzgerald, Edna, Edwardian, Entre Nous, Emmental, Elkhorn, Euphonium, Erudite, Econo Lodge, Eau Claire, Ebrillade, Elmwood, Escapade, Exploits River, English River, Eltonjohn, Endrico, Eustachian, Edmont, Eagle River, Evansburg, Excelsis, Engelbert, Eureka!