Postscript: Seventeenth Anniversary Contest

Thanks to all those who participated in this year's Seventeenth Anniversary Contest and here's my heartfelt [and can-you-tell-it's-repurposed] message to each and every one of you (top photo). This year there were three ways to win, all concerning marketing initiatives I've been considering for Trackside Treasure:

1. T-shirts and merch - Suggest a logo or image!

2. What would the best mascot name be?

3. Which song title most closely resembles the feeling you get reading this blog?

The entries were eye-opening, engaging, enlightening, edifying and elucidating, emigrating from all across North America. They not only speak to the entrants' preferred suggestions, but also how they view Trackside Treasure and its role in its tiny little corner of cyberspace. Here are some of the pleasantest comments ever received in a blog contest:

• Thanks for all you do. Your work has kept me coming back for many of those 17 years (I was a little late in discovering this blog). Congratulations on another spin around the sun for Trackside Treasure. - Michael Hammond

• Congratulations on 17 years and here's wishing you many more! I always enjoy your posts and look forward to whatever is on the horizon. - JD Lowe

• Continue to enjoy the blog….17 years later. I often check out your Working Stamps blog. I'm not a collector, but I absorbed enough by osmosis spending time with my grandfather that I kind of, sort of, understand…. - John Fenner

• I am a week late, but happy 17th! This American loves the site and the updates which take a lot of hard work. Again, cheers and many more years of "Trackside Treasure". - Joseph Matthews

HOW YOU MIGHT THINK I LOOK WHILE I'M BLOGGING:

HOW I ACTUALLY FEEL WHEN I'M BLOGGING...

I wish I had some time to create suitably subtle and amazingly appropriate illustrations for this post, but I now need to spend a few days on my front porch doodling the described logos, carefully silk-screening and hand-sewing mascots from the finest high-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets, and sourcing sonorous songs from my personal record collection currently housed in seven former K-Mart tractor trailers just behind my property. 

But enough of my whining and let's get to the winning! Here are some of the best!

TRACKSIDE TREASURE T-SHIRTS AND 'MERCH' LOGO:

Here's a logo I came up with. It looks strangely familiar when I stop squinting at it and put on my reading glasses, and I can't figure out why...but I'll like yours better:

• Something like a round seal with "Trackside" on the top and "Treasure" on the bottom.  An open pirate's treasure chest in the middle with a set of tracks sticking out.  A VIA train on the track.  Just the random thoughts of a blog reading railfan.

• How about milepost 179, standing proudly on a pole, bathed in the glow of an open treasure chest nestled at its base?

• Combination of logo and mascot, take 1: The CPR beaver crouched over a laptop, typing vigorously for a cool T-shirt image AND a mascot.  And hopefully, not a cease-and-desist order from some trademark lawyer person and call him “X2F”.

• A treasure chest brimming with jewels (or gold-plated tie nails) sitting right beside a railway track! 

• Here's one example of original submitted artwork from a contest entrant!

[Thanks to those readers who mistakenly misread 'logo' as 'loto'. Hosting lottery schemes and big jackpots is beyond the scope of Trackside Treasure, as is the government red tape and lottery licensing involved!]

TRACKSIDE TREASURE MASCOT:

• Combination of mascot and logo, take 2: A Northern Hawk Owl (non migratory, day-active) which ranges over our boreal forests. The symbolism behind the choice of this particular animal should be obvious. In the crest, this bird is seen at eye level as it perches on the symmetrically-peaked top of a telegraph pole with arms and insulators. Whether the wires are present or clipped off at the insulators depends on the 'era chosen' ... for its symbolism. 

• It seems obvious that your mascot should be Spike the Spike. Just make sure he/she doesn't look like that goofy paperclip mascot that tried to "help" in past iterations of MS Word.

• Mascot suggestion - Posty!  Tall, thin, Cross-arms for a head, TT on the left arm, 179 on the right arm, stuck into a treasure chest of gold coins, perhaps with an ear or two of corn in the mix for some of your corny puns.

• Mascot name - Shunter! has double meaning - the kind of loco, and, the rail-to-rail electrical shunting that takes place, which in some cases is one and the same thing...hopefully...and without the dispute from any infrastructure owners!

[Thanks to those readers who tragically took 'mascot' as 'ascot'. I can't really wear a fancy, knotted tie while I'm working on this blog - it would cut off what's left of my carotid brain-bound circulation.]

TRACKSIDE TREASURE THEME SONG:

• Take Five - The Dave Brubeck Quartet (besides the literal idea of taking a break to visit Trackside Treasure, the piece is unique as most pieces don't use that time signature and it suggests a refined knowledge of music. Trackside Treasure is unique in the way it covers many of its topics and in its areas of specialty. The music came out in 1959, when all of the classic railway hardware, old and new, was generally still in service in Canada).

• Canadian Railroad Trilogy - Gordon Lightfoot (two mentions)

• Peace Train - Cat Stevens 

• I'm a Train - Albert Hammond

• Jumping Someone Else’s Train - The Cure

• Last Train to Clarksville - The Monkees

• Train Round the Bend - The Velvet Underground (give it a listen!) 

• Big Rock Candy Mountain - fun, whimsical, lyrical (much like Trackside Treasure).

• Something between John Coltrane's Blue Train and Pat Metheny's Last Train Home.

[Thanks to those readers who erroneously read 'song' as 'smog'. Sure, the smoke has been oppressive across much of North America but here in Southeastern Ontario, far from the Big Smoke, the air is clear (and we want to keep it that way} and only thick with expletives and epithets when I hit 'Publish' before it's time to do so!]

THE LABORIOUS PROCESS OF CHOOSING A WINNER THEN BEGAN

All of those confusingly creative entries were laboriously copied using a Montblanc Meisterstück Calligraphy Maki-e Fountain Pen onto colourful hand-crafted rice paper and folded into delicate origami cranes before being blown/flown by the salt spray off Lake Ontario into in a Pantry Shelf canned chicken 48 fl.oz. can I've been saving under my back porch for this purpose since the 1970's. (It was just time to put it to use.) Then, after sustaining a few minor lacerations to my wrists, I finally drew out the winning entry - before going for a tetanus shot.

The winner of Trackside Treasure's Seventeenth Anniversary Contest is...

Alan Graham of Vancouver, BC. 

Alan noted: "I look forward to reading many more editions of your blog.  Thank you for your creative and inspirational ways of paying it forward." Trackside Treasure's coveted anniversary prize pack will be winging its way to Alan via Canada Post on an Air Canada flight diverted through the tariff-laden United States. Should be no problem. Alan responds to his win: "Thank you Eric!  What an honour!"

AND NOW IT'S ON TO TRACKSIDE TREASURE'S 18TH YEAR!

Thanks to contest entrant Mike Kulesza for sharing this photo of the rear view from VIA No 54 last night.

 While each anniversary gives us an opportunity to look back, 

it's also time to look forward with optimism!