Thankful Thursday: A Few Words About Wordless Wednesday #278

This is Bill Maguire and his lovely wife Georgie. You first heard about Bill a couple months ago when I was able to visit his layout (click here for the layout tour). Since then, the layout's been dismantled but fortunately all of his beautiful scratchbuilt structures are finding homes on other layouts - including the Valley Line (click here for what I was willing to do for the Dickinson warehouse and click here for the first foray of his structures into East Berlin).

Bill & Georgie have been busy over the summer with relocating and all, but now that they're getting settled in, it was time for them to go on a tour of a couple layouts where the structures landed. Not only did he get over to the sadly-blogless Bob Murphy's New Haven layout (he may not have a blog, but he has his own layout movie - click here for that), but Bill & his Missus visited Essex, Deep River, Middletown, and East Berlin in my basement on the Valley as well.

Looking over the old Pratt & Reed factory - future home of Middletown Meat Packing

I know I've said it before many times, but it's worth repeating: One of the best things about this hobby are the people. All the model railroaders I've met have been among the nicest folks I know. And their generosity with their time & talent is seemingly boundless.

Sadly, there are many of them that we'll never get a chance to meet. They enjoy the hobby as an individual pursuit and we don't get the chance to see, appreciate, and enjoy their work. Thankfully, in Bill's case, he knew a mutual friend of ours and gave him a heads up about his plan to retire. And that led to our getting the opportunity to host his work and to share it with you.

So thank you Bill & Georgie for giving us the privilege of being able to include such amazing art works on our layouts - for that's truly what they are.