It's hard to believe we're already halfway thru the year, but that's where we are.
I do apologize for writing this a bit late -- hopefully by now, everyone who celebrates the day has had a chance grab a burger or brat at a cookout, and is getting ready to sit back and watch for some fireworks either tonight or in the coming days.
Listening from my home office, the celebrating started in our neighborhood last night and hasn't stopped.
The sun's going down already, so let's get started.
Two weeks ago, we added several Diesels West items to our store, including the four Southern Pacific sets that support 3DTrainStuff.com's West Colton route and a pack of activities also now available in our library. These sets provides a wide variety of locomotives and equipment used in the late 1970's until the merger with the Union Pacific, including some excellent "second generation" diesels from General Electric including B30-7's and U30C's, and EMD SD40-T's, SD45's, MP15AC's and GP38's.
There's also a BN U30C set with a period appropriate coal train set, which I'll admit has been a personal favorite as I used to see these moving around Texas prior to the merger with the ATSF.
My father-in-law, Sgt. Thomas Clemens, is one of those who defended our country as a Marine.
He was the inspiration for both my own son and my nephew to join the Corps, and served in Vietnam as well as at Camp Pendleton, ending his service with the 4th Combat Engineering Brigade in Knoxville, TN.
When we lived in Texas, we'd see my in-laws almost every other week or so. They lived just a couple hours north, and we'd meet up in the Chickasaw National Rec area for camping, or elsewhere as they spent time in their retirement as campground hosts and gate guards for natural gas drilling sites. It was great for our kids to have that much time with their grandparents, and that's something that my wife and I have tried to do with our own grandkids.
Unfortunately, Tom passed away last Friday following complications from injuries from a fall he took. We'll be laying him to rest this coming weekend with full military honors, and as we have much to do, I hope you'll understand why this edition of SOS needs to be shorter than usual.
I'll be out of pocket on and off over the next week, but I know that Dale, Gerry and John will have things covered as far as the forums go.
All that said... Thanks for being part of our community, and go enjoy the fireworks.
And when you see one of those white hot cannon bursts that shake the ground, remember that our freedom exists because of people like Tom who ran towards the sound of gun and cannon fire 248 years ago, and still continue to do so today.