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[KevinKorell]

As most of you are aware, better news came my way in late March, allowing me to (for now) restore all plans for future fests, including the most pending one, Southern California, in a couple of months. Still, nothing is etched in stone, and things could change again in due time.

Recognizing that the economy is still not all that great, I'm happy that many of you will be able to make the SoCal trip in July. We'll do our best to have a good time, and then we'll come home and wait for the credit card bills to come. I think it would be best, however, given what many of us will be spending on this trip, to not have any Fests in August this year. We did it in 2008 only because the Florida RailFest was relatively shorter and cheaper than the NoCal Fest of 2007 was, and the SoCal Fest this year will be.

Looking ahead to the Fall, we've met in Boston the past 2 years in early November. There isn't much left to do there that we haven't yet done on an official Fest, except for the Lowell Line (an easy 2-hour round trip). Taking New England as a whole, besides Boston the only other commuter line left to do is the Waterbury Branch of Metro North. So I began looking at a possible Fest whereby we spend one night in Boston, do the Lowell Line, and then either on the way up or back we ride a Northeast Regional that stops in Bridgeport, CT so we could do the Waterbury Branch from there. Well as the schedules have it, in either direction the Waterbury Branch does not connect well with Northeast Regionals to & from the north. In a few cases there is just ONE MINUTE between arrival of one train and departure of the next. It might require going to Stamford and doubling back on Metro North (or vice versa), and the good thing about that is that it would allow us to take Acela and get 500/750 AGR points.

I also have not yet decided what to do in January. The next one or two Fests in the New York area will focus on the Long Island Railroad as we still have a lot of stuff to conquer. Trips to coastal places like Oyster Bay, Port Jefferson, and Long Beach might be more pleasurable if they were done at a warmer time of year than January... assuming you've all thawed out from High Bridge, Poughkeepsie, and Old Saybrook from earlier this year. There is also the factor of the days being shorter in January, so we can do fewer activities in daylight. The desired Friday evening trip would be in darkness the entire way if we did it in January.

Take a look at a potential Metro New York Fest featuring the LIRR. I'll take any ideas any of you might have as to how we could make this work without freezing our butts off as we did this past January, and without doing too much travel after sunset.

For 2010, the last of our West Coast Fests for a while will take place in the summer (July). We will visit Portland, Tacoma, Seattle, and Vancouver, ride the Cascades and both branches of the Empire Builder, and ride Sound Transit's Central LINK on what will hopefully be approximately its first anniversary. Throw in Portland's MAX and WES as well as possibly a tourist trolley ride, Tacoma LINK, Sounder, Seattle Monorail, South Lake Union Streetcar, and Vancouver's SkyTrain and we have the makings of a very active and fun-filled summer event in the Pacific Northwest.

Given how things can change drastically, let's stop there and hope we can pull this off before looking further into the future.