Well, what can one say about 2020; at least what is printable! Be you a member or a friend of the Atlantic Coast Line & Seaboard Air Line Railroads Historical Society, I hope you and your family are in good health and remain that way.
As we approach the end of the year, I would like to share with you some of the achievements and challenges we had during 2020 and our outlook for 2021. If a member we appreciate your participation, and I would like to encourage you to renew your membership when it comes up. If a friend, please consider becoming at least a regular member. To all, check out our 2021 calendar in the online store. Besides Lines South, we hope some of the improvements we have made (and have in progress) add value to membership.
2020, What Can One Say:
2020 started with a successful annual meeting in Jacksonville during early February. We had good attendance, a great slate of presentations and an informative and entertaining banquet speaker. We also had an excellent behind-the-scenes tour of the Prime F. Osborn III Convention Center, principally the former Jacksonville Terminal head house. Sometime soon, I will post a presentation about that tour in the Members section of our website, and post some of the photos.
Then 2020 went south, quickly. The last time I was out of Florida was on a business consulting trip to North Carolina during the first week of March. We are still trying to close that deal (moving stuff on Norfolk Southern), but it looks like it will happen in 2021! I traveled each way on Amtrak’s Silver Star to Rocky Mount, NC. This allowed me to enjoy a rail trip over the A and S lines all the way from Tampa. Northbound, there was onboard entertainment for breakfast as two coach passengers battled each other in the coach adjacent to the lounge; they debarked at Cary, NC. As for cuisine, the only source was the Amfleet II lounge; a half bottle of red wine does help enhance the experience of the Angus Beef Cheeseburger! The crew and service were good, and the Viewliner I sleeper was clean and comfy.
The Archives:
That trip also allowed me to spend a few hours in our archives in Rocky Mount (while waiting for 91 upon my return) and appreciate the effort of some of our members. Our archives crew has done a great job in cleaning it up over the past year or so, clearing space and disposing of useless items (such as excess copies of VHS tapes) and moving non-ACL/SAL/SCL items on to the appropriate societies. If you attended our banquet in February, you received a special item unearthed from the archives, a genuine SCL U36B 1776 tie clip! It was no flimsy giveaway either! The archives team includes Curtis Brown, Dean Gordon, Zak Agresto, and Larry Goolsby. I also helped out, a little. Because of their efforts, one can now easily access most of the room! Unfortunately, COVID-19 has ground that effort to a snail’s pace for now.
The Website:
While all of us saw our summer plans to attend train shows, historical society meetings, and other fun stuff go down the drain, your Board embarked on the long-planned rebuild of our website. In June, we elected to get professional help do this, and selected The Garbely Publishing Company. Rudy Garbely and his wife Carolyn Hoffman have done a great job working (and putting up) with our Board members in designing the new site, transferring our meager existing content to the new site, and refining the format and adding content. We will continue to work with them on enhancements and updates. I guess most of you like it; we have had positive feedback, constructive comments on a couple of problems, and more questions from members and non-members. Rudy just advised me we had 741 unique visitors to the site from November 3rd through December 2nd . We feel the redux was needed and a worthwhile investment.
We have been adding more content and functionality as time goes by. The most recent big change was the rebuild of the Store, where you can now point, click, fill a shopping cart, check out, and pay us! Click on a product and in most cases, you will see informative descriptions. There are also now easy ways to donate! The new system also provides us with timely reports. If you want to order the old-fashioned way (via paper form), you can still do that. Just remember we are all volunteers, so it still takes a few weeks to get you your stuff. These enhancements will also improve the process of registration for future events.
The Members Only section is up and has a large number of presentations to see, with more to come. We also are adding more photos to the public photo section as time permits. For those of you who are not members, a one-year regular membership is only $35, which gets you 4 issues of Lines South. Joining is also now easy through the website. We plan to post one or two complete past issues of Lines South on the site so potential new members can see the product.
The Board has been advancing other projects, mostly boring but important admin stuff (many thanks to Paul Faulk and Wayne Fletcher). Without a doubt, the year’s major achievement is the reborn website. On that, I would like to provide a special thanks to board member Buck Dean, our stalwart webmaster, who somehow kept the old one up and did a great job working with Rudy Garbely to migrate the site and content to the new format and platform in the face of a tight deadline back in June. Curtis Brown did a great job in reviewing our options for the website and in recommending Garbely Publishing.
Well, that is it for 2020. Good riddance!
2021, A New Year:
Well, the beginning of 2021 will be tough, and here is our bad news upfront. The Annual Meeting we normally hold in Jacksonville, FL in early February is canceled. No doubt some of you already knew, and the rest of you likely expected that. While the Golden Spike Train Show in Jacksonville is still scheduled for February 13th (for now), there was no way we could make the required commitments and take the risk. For now, we also have no plans for the society to attend any train shows (well, the few that are actually going on).
Zoom Meeting, February 20th:
Now for the good news, we plan to have a Zoom meeting in February, tentatively scheduled to be on Saturday, February 20th. It will run four hours from 1 PM to 5 PM. During the first few hours, we plan to provide at least two PowerPoint presentations (any volunteers?) and wrap up with our annual business meeting as required by our bylaws. This schedule is the reverse of what you will see in your Lines For Members which is being printed, and the E-news which just went out. No doubt there will be more changes between now and then! Full details will be confirmed and posted at our website in January and e-mailed as well.
As 2021 unfolds, we will consider holding a large multi-day regional event in the second half of the year somewhere in the southeast.
Division Program:
During the first quarter, we will select the leadership teams of each of the new Divisions (any volunteers?). We will then kick off that program and hopefully pull off some one-day (likely Saturday) no-frills low-risk mini-meets in the second half of the year in some of the Divisions. These are more likely to occur rather than a large multi-day event in 2021.
The Archives:
We hope to restart the cleanup of the archives in 2021. We are also exploring acquiring some more space there which would give us more elbow room, working space, and a meeting area (I checked out the options back in March). If we add the additional space, I would like to see us hold a mini-meet there in the second half and perhaps have a public open house. While we continue to evaluate other potential locations in the southeast for the archives, there are no plans for any relocation in the near future; besides, we still have a lot of sorting to do!
The Website:
We plan to add more content and features. Please feel free to provide us with comments or suggestions for the website and the Store, as to format, content, store products, etc. We have scanned some archive materials for possible sale by download and/or other digital medium; it is a work in progress we hope to roll out in 2021.
That is it for now. I hope all of you can enjoy the upcoming holidays and please stay well!
W. Jim Langston
President ACL & SAL HS