THANK YOU for all involved for a great time this year in Riverside. It was super seeing old friends and making new ones. All the planning hours to pull these event off paid off. Sure, things happened - like the buses never showing up at the Metrolink shops - but stuff happens. The BBQ chicken on Saturday at OERM was the best chicken I have ever had. The Walt Disney talk on Saturday evening and the meal and the room - WOW!!!

Many, many thanks to all involved.

Jim

I had to goggle the term to find out it stands for Association of Tourist Railways and Railway Museums...

Doesn't quite roll off the tongue as easily as ARM or TRAIN does it? But like BNSF, they tried to maintain the identity of both prior organizations.

In somewhat related news, I noticed this on the website:
Congratulations to our recently-elected Board of Directors:

Richard Anderson
G. Mark Ray
Scott Becker
Ken Rucker
John Bush
Jim Schantz
Steven Butler
Donald Tallman
Don Evans
Jim Vaitkunas
Terry Koller
Meg Warder
Bob LaPrelle
Kyle Wyatt
Linn Moedinger


The full staff listing is here:
http://www.railwaymuseums.org/index.php/board

The website for ATRRM is http://www.atrrm.org

Sooner or later, someone is going to come up with a catchy trade name for the organization...

To say nothing of the venue. The Mission Inn in Riverside sure doesn't get enough press outside of California - what an interesting, historic, unique and still functional hotel. The only place I've ever seen even close to it is La Posada in Winslow, and it is only two stories tall.

After you've fallen over all the "R's" and "T's", try calling it "A-TRRM" like "A-TEAM", and you can remember the proper order of the consonants!

I have to second Jim's comment about the BBQ. As I told the chef, I tried the beef first and it was very good. Then I tried the chicken, and it put the beef to shame!
My mouth is watering right now just thinking about it....

For me, the seminars were a dissappointment, thanks to the Federal Government shutdown which resulted in the lack of attendance of any FRA types.

By far, the highlight was the Orange Empire Museum. Never having been there before but having heard plenty of stories, it did not dissapoint. The massive collection of equipment is truely impressive. It was easy to spend an entire day without running out of things to do or see.

Eric

Amen! Everything you said is bang on!

Thank you Clyde @ The Southern California Chapter of The Railway and Locomotive Historical Society in Pomona for the tour of its 4014 "Big Boy" after the conference. Impressive!

It was a great event. I've attended every ARM/ATRRM fall conference since 2006 and they all have been well organized. Only disappointment were the presentations that had to be cancelled due to NO BUDGET BILL from Congress (at the time of the meeting).

One wish list item for future conferences? More book sales, be it an antique book dealer or museum estate sale. The conference held in Colorado Springs had an antique book dealer as a vendor and he had a TON of railroad related books. I left there with a suitcase full of books and the man did hand over fist business selling off good books that otherwise might not move well. The folks at Exporail sold a good number of books at the conference a couple of years ago and OERM had a gangbuster estate book sale. Lots of goodies went for pennies on the dollar ($5 per hardback book, $3 for paperbacks). They and another rail group had received a large book donation from an estate and had to get rid of them as they literally had no spare space to store them. I think there were about ten of us badgering OERM's president as to when the sale would start. No sooner did the boxes materialize and we dug in, each of us making our own pile. There were some really good books in the sale that were worth far more than what they went for.