Relative Quiet, A Trip, & Mid-Year Hell

We're well past the halfway point in 2025, and once again the question becomes where did the time go? Time flies when you get busy, that's for sure. The year didn't start that way for me, but boy did it get busy, and not necessarily in a good way. As ever though, it's not all bad. Also as usual, I've been MIA for a while in posting and getting out there and getting photos. There's still lots of time in the year, but it's already been a pretty hectic year so far.

I haven't been completely absent in the photo game at least, just mostly instead. I managed to sneak a long weekend trip to Ohio for some goodies and get a few other things locally - but emphasis on just a few. Compared to last year, it's been a decidedly quiet time for photos... but there's good reasons for that!

With just how busy 2024 was, following up such a landmark year was always going to be a damn tough task. In many ways, I satisfied a lot of my local photo desires, and all the mileage on the car really took its toll on it, and me too. I absolutely have felt a fair bit of photo burnout following the end of RoadRailer operations last year - I needed a break as did my car, that kind of chasing is so bad for it!

I figured my year would start pretty slow and pick up a bit more during the spring and summer, but this wasn't quite the case. This year started slow, much more so than usual. All I have to show for January was a pair of photos of a double GT-led Humko local in my hometown.

Now, January is usually a slow period, but I did absolutely zero photography during February. Nothing at all. To be honest, I don't remember any part of February at all at this point, so I guess it was a pretty boring month in more than one way.

At least March held a little activity. I was running errands of a sort and happened across some Illinois Central motors on A407 and A408 that made following each train a bit worth a brief venture.

CN A407 meets A408 at the southern mouth of the yard, Champaign, IL

CN A408, Pesotum, IL

CN A407, Leverett, IL

It was a nice thing, A407 rolling into town as a late A408 prepped to depart south, so while the former did its yard work, I followed the latter down south for a little bit, then jumped back north to bag a few quick grabs of the northbound once again. It was a pretty decent little outing all told, but the dreary overcast March weather does not make for particularly colorful imagery. It's definitely hard to want to get out and about for things when they look so depressingly brown and grey. Still...

We did get color a few days later - and some sun!

NS 4851 leads NS 148 by Shops Tower in Springfield, IL

I was making my annual trek over to the Springfield train show (good show by the way, do visit the spring show if you're in the area! [fall show is hosted by other people and, frankly, sucks]) when I got word that the still pretty new Norfolk Southern heritage unit, the 4851 Tennessee, Alabama & Gulf Railroad, was leading a train towards me. It only seemed like the right move to try to get a couple of shots of that, right? Well, obviously I did just that. The wave from local-legend Jim "The Emoji Man" in the cab and the shining sun on the nose as it passed me and the Shops tower definitely gave me enough fuel to go follow after it! I had timed things well, pulling up to Shops just minutes before he was given his green signal.

NS 4851 leads NS 148 at Dawson, IL

I wound up chasing out towards the Lanesville elevator before calling it there and returning back to Springfield to attend the train show. It was indeed a good show and I found some great deals on some Tangent 86ft boxcars - a couple of NS 86fts for $25 a piece is a damn steal! 30/per for an ICG and SOU to go with them was not something I was going to turn my nose up at. My autoparts train is feeling mostly complete already... I have just a few more to do for it I think.

On the way home, I stopped in at Decatur for gas, then opted to check out the yard area as I hadn't heard any news about the TAG unit having left yet. Initially, I was greeted by pulldowns from the yard power, various SD40-2s, and was delighted to finally see the NS 6173 in person again. After this engine, another local engine, blew up just over a year prior, we had all thought it was to be scrapped at worst, rebuilt and repainted out of its well-worn Thoroughbred paint at best, but NS surprised us by repairing the damage and shipping it back out. The only changes since its initial death were the new numberboards, replacing the vintage N&W era ones as someone in Altoona looted the poor thing of its boards during its time there.

Yard pulldowns aren't terribly photogenic, nor was the location I was at, but I wanted a photo for posterity if nothing else.

I ran into a buddy there and learned the TAG unit was still in town - hours after I had left it behind! Light was no good for shooting straight on, long-gone by now, but we chatted for a while before the TAG finally got moving, so I went and grabbed a little going away shot at Lake Decatur for the sake of it.

I'd follow the train east towards Tolono, meeting up with friends from the local university railroad club (IRC) at Sloan who had come out to see the TAG unit at speed, then ended my day after watching a few other random NS trains at the CN/NS diamond. Good times all around.

That was March 10th, and that is still the last thing I've taken a photo of in my own state as of mid-July. Yeesh, what happened?

These trains were very much flukes. I'm not interested in shooting most things on the Lafayette District on NS now since RoadRailer is gone, meanwhile the Bloomington District is basically all nocturnal runs and SD60Es now. No good except for some night exposures, which I've kind of done all I wanted there anyways. CN A407 and A408 are harder to predict than ever, particularly A408 was it runs hours and hours earlier than it used to. I watched them leave Champaign south towards Centralia around midday for years, now all of a sudden departures between 4-6am are the norm. It's gotten better in recent months, I see them on my commute sometimes now, but still - hard to work with that anymore.

The loss of ATCS on NS happened early in 2024, with only the Bloomington and Frankfort districts surviving into the New Year, but CN had soldiered on, though on borrowed time. Then one day in January 2025 the entire Champaign sub went dark and never came back. The two NS districts fell around the same time. ATCS going down was a real punch to the gut - it was such a useful tool and made deciding if it was worth going out for a little bit much easier, suffice to say. If you knew how things tended to move, you could take a glance at it and figure out what trains were where even without seeing them in person - I can't tell you how many A407s I spotted stuck in the hole in Tolono mid-late morning on ATCS and verifying in person! The less-trafficked lines like the Bloomington on NS are an utter nightmare without something like ATCS. Being able to use this software was very much a privilege and complaining about losing it is very much a first world problem, to be sure, but losing that tool really does take a toll on the morale.

The Ohio Trip

As the end of the month approached, I decided it was time to get out of the local bubble for the first time in a while. Deseret had been my last time shooting anything outside of my home state, and I was up for another little trip. I didn't want to go too crazy with it, but I found a few things linking together before long that would prove to work out in my favor. The real kicker is that I'd been planning to make a jaunt like this for months, but I only pulled the trigger on it when all my old Expedia rewards were about to expire. What's the point of having them if you never use them and let them go, eh? I don't book with them anymore, the deals simply are not there anymore in my experience, but I had some leftover. No point in wasting that!

Since around the time RoadRailer came to a close, I'd been working on some research into it. What initially began as some curiosity towards the whole concept (which I had mostly neglected until last year) turned into an all-out research project as I found information scattered and tough to piece together. Since then, I've put together a 43-page text document detailing everything I can possibly find about those goofy semi-trailers-turned-traincars - I'm only in the 1990s now and still have a ways to go! Suffice to say that all this digging led to unearthing some useful info, such as locations of preserved or otherwise surviving pieces of RoadRailer equipment. I plugged those into a map and determined I had a decent little adventure to take with that in mind.

So, one morning, I set off for Ohio!

My first proper stop was actually just outside of Fort Wayne, Indiana, at the FW Historical Society. There, the only preserved intact Mark IV RoadRailer sits as a storage unit. The Mark IV trailers were the early editions of the post-C&O era RoadRailer, with several thousand pounds of weight dedicated to the retractable set of rail wheels hanging between the spread road tandems. ​

Mark IV trailers were fully retired Labor Day 1994 on Triple Crown / NS, the only one still using them by that time, and most were either scrapped or had their rail wheels removed, becoming just slightly heavier and sturdier regular trailers. Only this one, TCSZ 210109 is known to survive in 2025 fully intact. The tongue, rail wheels, airbrake equipment - it's all still here.

I shot the FWHS an email before stopping by to confirm I would be able to come inspect the trailer and they were very agreeable, which was wonderful. I spent a good while getting photos of various details all around and underneath the old trailer - it may seem silly, but getting hundreds of photos worth of reference material is well worth it. It's good for model building, both the virtual and scale kinds!

Following that, it was time to actually head into Ohio, where I stopped at a small facility southeast of Napoleon. Less than an hour away sat several other Mark IV trailers, and though stripped of their wheels and their tongues chopped off, these trailers are particularly special. I absolutely had to stop by for photos.

These are the legendary BIRR trailers. The RoadRailer as we knew it today (or last year, really) as returned to the rails by the Bi-Modal Corporation by Robert S. Reebie in the 1970s. Bi-Modal built a few test units (RORA 001, RORA 002) and spent a few years dealing with legal and regulatory problems to create the Mark IV RoadRailer. The Budd Company built 250 45ft Mark IVs for Bi-Modal in 1980 and 1981, with 6 becoming the special AdapterRailer units to allow the trailers to couple up to regular equipment. The BIRR trailers traveled across the nation to perform tests, some commercial and others not so, all in a bid to try to popularize the idea. They ran over the ICG, BN, Conrail, UP and CNW, RF&P, even WP - they went damn near everywhere.

The BIRRs were leased to NS after they stepped in to takeover the failed BN-GTW Detroit-Wentzville autoparts RoadRailer service, which led to the formation of Triple Crown shortly after. Production Mark IV trailers built by Wabash National and Stoughton (the unit at the FWHS is a Stoughton!) grew to 48ft and eclipsed the numbers of the BIRRs quickly, and the creation of the Mark V standard and subsequent production of those units relegated the BIRRs to surplus. TCS and NS stopped using them circa 1989, where afterwards they seemed to become just crazy heavy TOFC units instead for a few years, mostly used on the BN. The trail goes cold into the 1990s, but we do know that many of the old trailers were sold off to private owners. Some were disfigured into hardly recognizable shapes, others remain relatively unmolested after all these years - such as these!

Over half a dozen BIRRs sit in a small lot, missing their rail wheels and their nose tongues having been sliced off. They're distinctive enough though, with the giant RoadRailer wordmark and the BIRR numbers and reporting marks making it obvious enough what these are to those of us who know. I had to stop and see them once I learned of their existence!

I spent little time here, this wasn't a place I was able to learn of the owners and contact beforehand, so I simply pulled up, took a few quick detail photos, and departed quietly. I did make sure to snag a few photos of the builders plates. Too cool to ignore!

After this, I was barely 20 minutes away from the legendary hotspot of Deshler, Ohio. We're stepping away from trailers and back to normal trains and signals. Deshler is a place I've been before with a friend, and it just so happened that in between all these RoadRailer pieces I wanted to see, the CSX Toledo sub and its old B&O CPL signals sit. We're hitting a few more than two birds with one stone now.

Activity was fairly quiet when I arrived mid-late afternoon, but there were trains moving, and I had now reached my main target for the day, so I just hung out and watched trains for a bit. It was pretty chill all told. Eventually though, we got some traffic on the Toledo sub itself and not the other line that crosses it in town. 

Nothing too fancy by any stretch, but it was nice to grab a few more shots in the Deshler area again. Several other railfans joined me for the shots - it was a surprisingly busy day there in terms of railfan foot traffic, I found - and I chatted with a few for a while before retiring to my hotel for the night. That hotel cost me something like $6 after those reward points I mentioned earlier. Can't complain about that!

While talking with those other railfans the day prior, we had talked about the NS Fort Wayne line and its PRR signals and such. I had idly considered taking some time to go and seek those out, just for the sake of it, but wasn't sure about it. That wasn't in my original plans, but I also wasn't on a strict schedule or anything. I kept mulling it over before bed, then decided hell, why not? I set an early alarm and planned to go a bit farther east than my original plans had considered.

Previously, I only thought I'd go as far east as Carey, but that next morning, I found myself in Mansfield, Ohio instead. Pennsylvania Railroad Position Lights are relatively plentiful in town, and being my favorite style of signals, I knew I had to at least check them out, listen in for any potential traffic for a bit, then get back to my original plans. I didn't plan on rolling into town to find a train ready to leave already!

NS 172 was my surprise target - I was simply navigating to a set of the signals to look at them when I looked the other direction and saw them sitting there, lights on. That surely had to mean they'd be moving soon, so I found somewhere to park up and listened in on the radio. Lo and behold, they got permission to go, and I was heading over to snag a shot. The lighting was all sorts of funky as morning clouds began to burn off, but I had just enough cloudage to get me what I wanted. The NS Fort Wayne line, a former double main on the PRR, is being slowly single-tracked by NS now and the signals are not long for this world. I was taking any opportunity to snap them.

I knew, however, I wouldn't be beating this train to any signals farther west, and light would be no good for that even if I could, so I let the 172 go and hung around to see if anything else would move. Luck was with me as a grain train came out and worked the elevator in town, but unfortunately it didn't work for photos. They shoved grain hopper-first east to the elevator and worked it that way, then when returning west, ran around their remaining hoppers and shoved them first too. Too bad, but it's the gamble you get with this hobby. I looked around a bit more, but decided it was time to head to Carey.

On my way back west to my next RoadRailer target, I made a pair of pitstops in Crestline to check out the signals there. A few PRR lights and some Conrail-era trilight replacements made a brief stop worth my time, and then it was back to the highway. At least, it was for a few miles until I discovered the NS 172 sitting still just outside of Bucyrus. I pulled off and got to the nearest crossing, where they had parked up, and found their power was just inside the start of the siding there. It was almost as if they had hit the brakes too late on a signal and were recharging just past it or something. I can't say I know what the deal was, but mere minutes after my arrival, they got moving.

They weren't alone there, as in the siding itself was a Wheeling & Lake Erie train! I've seen them from the highway before in years past, but never had an opportunity to get photos of them. They were eastbound, and some clouds were back... ideas were forming.

My mind was made up as the end of NS 172 finished passing WE430. I knew exactly where I was going - back to Crestline! Well, after another quick shot of the WE7013 anyway.

Crestline is most well known, at least to me, for the absolutely massive PRR signal bridge whose original signals were replaced with trilights by Conrail. I had stopped by to peek at it earlier, assuming I would just be having my one glamor photo of it, but found myself back less than a half hour later with a Wheeling train on my heels. I was already glad to have made my sidetrip out this way, but as the short train passed me and the signal bridge by, I was even more satisfied.

With the WLE train off to do some work in town (I think?), I continued my journey westwards. I stopped in Bucyrus briefly as I saw some other trains moving about there, but found none of them were heading down any lines with interesting signals, so I got moving to Carey.

Carey was my target for another RoadRailer hunt: this one being the PupRailer. I've come across several photos of it in town there, and I did my Maps/Streetview hunting to figure out everywhere it's sat in the photos I've seen. I got into town and absolutely could not find it. None of the spots I knew it to have sat at contained the legendary 28ft UPS-style pup RoadRailer trailer. I could only get so far in some spots, I wasn't exactly going to trespass behind local industries or businesses to find a semi trailer, but there were limits to where I could go look for it. There are one or two lots I think it could be in, but alternatively, the company who owns it (Rexlor) may well have just moved it to a new location. It could be actually being used as a trailer for once (shocker!), or maybe it was scrapped. The most recent photo I have of it in town is several years out of date, so who really knows. What I need to do is contact Rexlor and ask about it, or come back with a drone and really do some searching. Or some of both. The hunt isn't over, but who knows...

Although PupRailer didn't work out (a theme for the poor thing), I did some quick math and determined I would not be accomplishing the rest of the trips goals that day. Instead, I would book another hotel and go hangout in CPL territory the rest of the day and some of the next morning. In Deshler that afternoon/early evening, I only shot one train at CPLs, but I did see an ex-CN RoadRailer on TOFC on a westbound CSX train. That was pretty neat!

The next day, I hung around in my hotel until I saw something on the Deshler railcam moving southbound. I had a goal for the day, but I wasn't sure how well it would work. It was a mixed bag, suffice to say. My plan was to shoot said southbound at North Cairo, then chase down to Tipp City. Unfortunately, CSX had stuffed a train in the North Cairo siding that obliterated any chance of getting that shot. As I went to re-plan that shot, I was greeted with a CSX local hauling north. It kept going beyond the signal, so my southbound had to be waiting farther north, so I followed after the local. I wasn't able to get a photo of it, but I did find my southbound at South Ottawa! Once the local cleared out, the southbound stack train, which I later learned was CSX I141, got a move on as well.

It was another dreary day, which means headlights and my camera do not play too nice together, especially in signal tele-smashes, but what can you do...

Although North Cairo wasn't going to happen, there were signals right at Main street in Cairo! I decided to go for that instead. My position here looks riskier than it is, as the parked freight from earlier extended down here and onto the main track, so unless CSX decided they wanted to cause an accident, I knew I was fine. The dwarf signal is well hidden beside the locomotive, but it was a very neat little feature I knew I had to snap.

From here, it was on to Tipp City. I wasn't familiar with any other areas on the Toledo Sub and I wanted to guarantee a shot there rather than risk losing the race, so I just went for that. I'm sure there were more opportunities for photos along the way I could have gotten, but I only know so much.

Down in Tipp City, I pulled up to the classic photo spot to discover a green signal for a northbound. There was a southbound signal a little farther away I decided to pay a visit to, and lo and behold, my patience paid off, as a northbound did indeed arrive.

Neat to capture elements of the former siding in place here - note the curved rails in the railroad crossing. Too bad no signs of an old signal for that track remained! Even so, this was a nice little bonus I hadn't planned on at all.

With the northbound out of the way, I returned to the other side and waited for my I141. It did eventually show up, but I have to say, I definitely have to come back and get another shot here. I got a bit sloppy and didn't get quite the right angle for the Tipp City shot - my positioning just wasn't quite right for the initial burst. I still got an okay photo out of it, but it isn't what I was hoping for admittedly.

Had I taken a few more steps to the right and backwards, crouched down a bit more, I probably would have been more satisfied. The frames of the train much closer to the camera didn't quite turn out either, so the center-of-frame shot is what my final ended up as. Okay trial run, but I would quite like a redo.

I did kinda get the angle I wanted on the rollingstock at least... hah. A five-pak of Gunderson GWG-50 Twin Stacks was on this train! I spotted them on the Deshler cam earlier in the morning and knew I needed to get a good photo of them. Until recently, I haven't been too big on intermodal in general (I've since determined I very much enjoy 80s and 90s era intermodal of most all forms), but Twin Stack "Viking Ship" wellcars are some of my favorite intermodal equipment there ever was. So bulky, so cool looking.

I used my available resources to see if another southbound might be following behind, but alas, no deal. The next southbound would be hours away, still stuck in Deshler itself, and I wasn't going to sit around forever. Instead, it was time for my next, final, target: Sardinia, Ohio.

What's down in Sardinia, you ask? Well, RoadRailer stuff again. After the 2015 retirement of all Triple Crown services except Detroit - Kansas City, some of the old equipment was purchased and stored in Sardinia. There was apparently a hope to re-use some of it for a new RoadRailer service lane, which never happened obviously. Old sheet & post trailers, Mark V Bogies, and most importantly, CouplerMate bogies all sat there. In Google Streetview imagery taken summer 2024, four CouplerMates sat on a spur there... I knew I had to get there and document them. I decided I would get to Sardinia, get my reference material, and dart back up to Tipp City. If I timed it right, that other southbound might be on the move and might be shootable for a redo, then I could head home. It wasn't too far out of the way for the return trip all things considered, so that became the plan.

My plans changed again. Everything was fine pulling into Sardinia, except...

​Here's what I should have seen:

They're a little buried, but four CouplerMates should be on this spur. Both 950-basic and 960-platforms!

Here's what I saw instead:

I can't begin to explain the frustration I felt upon finding this. Nowhere in the storage yard in town there did any sign of RoadRailer equipment remain - no CouplerMates, no trailers, no Mark V Bogies, nothing at all. By all accounts, it appears they and everything else have been scrapped. I was batting 50% for finding and documenting my RoadRailer hunts on this trip, and my average wasn't going to get better as this was my last stop for this outing. At the time, I was doubly frustrated as no signs of any CouplerMates being preserved were there, but a few weeks later it was revealed TVRM got one (and a bogie and trailer with it), so not all is lost at least. Supposedly, a second unit has been saved too, but that remains TBD as of writing this.

The reason this was so important is that the CouplerMate adapter bogie, built to replace the AdapterRailers as the way to transition from the drawbar tongues of the trailers to knuckle coupler, is the rarest of the modern RoadRailer equipment. AdapterRailers technically deserve that title, but as all signs point to every single one having been scrapped, that leaves the CouplerMate. TCS/NS didn't keep all that many after the 2015 purge, and now with the very last RoadRailer route gone... You can imagine getting reference material of the least photographed piece of RoadRailer equipment once every single one is scrapped is a bit hard. Thankfully, not all are gone now, but at the time...

As I was coping and driving around, searching for any sign that maybe the CMs had been just moved somewhere weird, I found myself at the far end of the siding east of town. I crossed the tracks, looking down the line of stored freight cars in the siding itself (and the remnants of the bagged, rusted over N&W signals that still remain), and resigned myself to leaving Sardinia empty handed. I spun the car around to head back to town and crossed the tracks, this time looking the other direction on the mainline - headlight.

Okay, not empty handed, but not what I came for. Consolation prize, let's take it. I pulled off, grabbed the camera, and darted back to the tracks on foot. That train was closer than I realized, and I was even more surprised to realize what it was. It was the CCET's only operable B36-7!

Although I was still mad about the CouplerMate swindle, getting a vintage GE leader and some crusted up old signals was not something I would get mad about whatsoever. Whatever these guys were doing, I wanted to shoot more of. How could I turn that down? I raced back to Sardinia, to the west end of the siding where more signals still stood, and waited.

Forget going back to Tipp City, this was where I needed to be! The stars had aligned to get me here at just the right time, and I spent just the right amount of time frustratedly searching for the long-gone RR bogies that I was able to catch these guys. They were slow moving coming into town, then a conductor rolled up in a company truck to get some switches lined for them. They were making a pickup here in town, handily enough.

Trust me, there's an EMD MP15 back there they're picking up. I didn't know anything about this railroad except they had some funky motive power and some old N&W signals that were bagged or otherwise non-operable. Shooting this was not in my plans, and I had done no prep work for it. When they coupled back up to their train and got going, I had no idea where I was going to follow them. In hindsight, I could have pulled several more shots off, but I just plain didn't know. I couldn't have planned for a B36 to show up out of nowhere, that's for sure!

Afton is where they did the last of their work before tying down, and despite rain coming in during and after the chase, I still managed a few photos - including more old N&W signals. These weren't the CPLs I was looking for on this trip to start, but I'm glad I saw what I did of them!

As the 5057 made its last pulldown and shoved back, another, new horn sounded in the distance. I turned around to discover an eastbound train staring down the westbound B36-7 I'd been following all afternoon, and quickly made my way over to grab a quick shot of it as it passed the dilapidated signal and entered the Afton yard. I was surprised that the 5057 had made as long of a pulldown as it did when it did, as the eastbound was coming right towards it while it was still moving west a bit. Both were slow moving and there wasn't really a risk of anything happening, but it's quite different to most other operations I've watched in the past. Most shortlines I come across never seem to run more than one train at a time anyway.

I was surprised by just how much color was in the trees following the rain. Given we were still barely getting into spring, it looked almost like fall in some spots. I wish I had known more about this operation beforehand so I could've captured more of that!

At any rate, that concluded my trip to Ohio. I gassed up and started heading west for home after I was sure there was no more westbound moves to be made on the railroad. I wasn't interested in heading back east, assuming the 1686 above would even keep going rather than stopping in the yard, nor was I interested in a late run up to Tipp City again. It was time to go home, and it was an uneventful and peaceful ride there for the most part, just some Cincinnati traffic was the only hiccup.

Mid-Year Hell

Home is where I stayed for that matter. That visit to the CCET was the last railroad thing I've shot, I'm afraid. I haven't had the desire to go out for anything else recently for reasons outlined much earlier, but also, things have just gotten busy lately. Just the next month, my wife flew in for another visit (still working on immigration! Progress is slow but good), where I found myself finally getting a job offer at last. There were some initial hiccups, but by the end of May I was getting back into the hot seat of actually going to work at long last. This has been a blessing for my finances, but less so for free time. Considering my free time is mostly useless without said finances... well, I'm gonna have to go with being employed.

I'm still getting into the swing of things in that regard, as I was only working in that position for a month before another internal department decided they wanted me. I've since moved positions already and am back in training yet again for IT service desk at our local hospital. It's a good thing I was getting more familiar with the hospital though, as somewhere in the middle of my initial position and this one, I suffered a gallbladder attack - a thing I didn't know existed until I was in so much pain I was in the Emergency Room being given fentanyl to ease the pain. Less than 48 hours later and they got me into surgery and removed the offending organ entirely. Another week for rest after that (thankfully discharged just a day later), a few more weeks slowly getting back to my feet at work, then shifting to the new position...

Somehow in all that mess my poor car, which has taken such beatings over the past few years of these photo trips, suffered major issues twice. The first time, just before I wound up in the hospital, it was a bad crankshaft sensor. We got that replaced at home after I got out of the hospital, and the engine stalls stopped, but power was way down, the car was louder, and things felt... off. Suddenly I'm driving back to work from lunch nearly two weeks later and my car gives out again, a massive stall, right as I'm crossing the railroad tracks. Absolutely comical. There was no simple at-home fix this time, it was bad enough I couldn't drive it anymore after that one. A tow to the shop later, my exhaust manifold needed to be replaced due to a burned out catalytic converter, and I was advised this would happen again in the future and that I will need a new car sooner rather than later. I also got a letter summoning me for jury duty next month, because I need more things to deal with, right?

So far, this year has been... interesting. Things are finally stabilizing somewhat. I'm mostly fully recovered from the gallbladder surgery, the car is working again, I'm working and making money finally, and I've made progress in other things. But, I've lost the time to go out and get photos for the most part. We'll have to see how things adjust over time as I settle into my new position. Given the car situation, I have to postpone any photo trips beyond the local bubble essentially - it runs well enough now, but knowing it's essentially a ticking time bomb with a clock no one can really see, I can't take some multi-day trip knowing the thing could conk out at any minute.

That's where we're at presently. Considering how the last few years have gone, this year being sort of on the down low is alright by me. There'll be time to get back into the swing of things in the future - and anyways, I've been enjoying doing some other hobbies lately anyway. I still have places and things I want to shoot in the future, sooner rather than later, but they'll have to wait for a bit more stability. But, we'll get there. All in good time.

Lastly, I'm also looking to do a website rework given the sorta half-death of Weebly situation (my webhost) going on, which essentially means starting over from scratch, but everything important will be saved one way or another in that. I'm hoping for a fresh look and feel with a more interactive and interesting layout for the gallery and/or new galleries, if I can have my way. I also have some exciting ideas for the future site, namely in some of the content that may become available in the somewhat distant future - but we'll see! Nothing concrete, but if it works out, it'll be a very fun time.

Anyways, that's all I have for now. Weird year to say the least! Let's hope the rest of the year goes a bit smoother, yeah? Until next time.

Cheers,
SM