Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

I left this site and forum several months ago for very personal reasons. I consider myself fortunate to return.

So many people have left during my absence. Why? Dunno. I wasn't here. It is obvious that Mike was the heart and soul this site - his baby - but why has his death resulted in the apparent slow strangulation of this site he so loved?

I asked to come back in an effort to regain some semblance of the normalcy I had before Chris died. Just trying to get a rudder back on my life. I remember having a lot of good hearted banter with many people here. People who shared my fascination with crossing signals.

This website showed me I wasn't alone in that fascination.

Chris would accompany me out on the signal picture expeditions. Mike would publish them. Mike was a great friend, Chris was my best friend. Mike died a few months before Chris did. I think both of them would be disappointed in the way things have gone in the last few years here.

Well for me... life happened! I moved from Illinois to Florida over the summer... a first for me, I lived in Illinois all 44 years of my life so far. It's been a bit of an adjustment, but finally starting to feel like home.

The downside? Where I live now has practically 0 train activity. No tracks within 5 miles of my apartment, and the ones that are there see maybe one or two trains a week. I will be moving to a different part of the county when my lease is up this coming June, so I might have a better chance of catching some activity.

I'm still here, but it's somewhat irregular due to school and things like that.

cabman701 wrote:and the ones that are there see maybe one or two trains a week.

Wow, I honestly thought that the tracks that run through St. Petersburg were dead!

Anyways for me, I just don't have motivation to go out and about. I check the site several times a day to see if something's new, but 90% of the time there isn't. I tend to have more of a social life than I did a year or so ago as well, which can get in my way. College also begins soon, which is a negative.

My area (across the bay from cabman) has decent rail traffic, although the best place to go is Plant City, which is some ways away from me. I could go into Tampa as well, but Tampa is not an ideal spot for getting pictures of signals due to the amounts of traffic, and also poor neighborhoods.

I've been taking plenty of photos around Illinois recently, and I have plenty from Ohio as well since I work there between March and November for the Cedar Point and Lake Erie Railroad. I have been sending in photos, however, I'm sure due to Mike Gillson's busy life, he doesn't have the time or motivation quite often to post updates frequently like Hickok did. So far the site right now, patience is a virtue.

I'm still around. From what I've heard talking with Gillson over Skype, there was a disagreement after Mike died causing several people to leave the forum. I don't know where Kight went though. He just kinda dropped off for no apparent reason.
Also, the next update to the site is going to be massive.

I can imagine. I've got lots of stuff sent in already and more in the works. Has Gillson said anything on when he would be able to post an update, or is it just a "wait and see" game right now?

TommyBNSF wrote:I can imagine. I've got lots of stuff sent in already and more in the works. Has Gillson said anything on when he would be able to post an update, or is it just a "wait and see" game right now?

Mostly wait and see. He's been rather busy with his work lately.

I sent him some pages a while back and he hasn't replied to me yet, so I figured he was probably busy with his personal life. Well I do look forward to when the next update comes out, because I do have a lot of stuff on the back burner and hopefully more future trips to get even more crossings here in Illinois before I go back to Ohio in March.

I also sent in a ton of pages from Alabama along with some from Florida and Pennsylvania.