Office of Steam Forum for Model & Toy Steam Gas & Hot Air Engines

My turn..!

From my heart and soul I sincerely thank each and every one of you.

It went pre-live live on February 28, 2019 when I became our first member. Then on March 1st we were open for all to join. I worked nearly 20 hours a day on establishment and set-up and tuning it over the first 4 days. We had a large helping hand from Cedge (Steve Tyner). I was followed the next day on March 1st by nearly all of our great admin team including Jim, oilfield_steam (RIP Scott), St Paul Steam (Bruce), txlabman (Charlie), IndianaRog, Nick, and a couple days later classixs (Jan) Y'all make a great admin team and I consider all of you dear friends.

By March 9th we had 100 members join us in the first 9 days!

If you read our rules (Forum Decorum), you will notice they are not at all onerous or restrictive. I so much appreciate the quality of our membership who are the most respectful of each other as I have ever witnessed anywhere online.

This little adventure now has 846 members!

I have met some of the nicest people in existence through this hobby. For this alone I am forever grateful.


Here I will add a copy of part of a post I made earlier today from another thread:
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@Oliv (and others) should be encouraged to participate here. He is welcome, has a lot of knowledge, and a nice collection.

I am aware there are those who have been encouraged elsewhere to feel somehow disloyal if they post here.
The landscape has experienced quantum changes since our forum was started on this day 5 years ago.

Case in point..... Has anyone had a recent look at the amount of Facebook groups about engines??
If one were to judge by FB, it would appear to be a highly splintered hobby. 

5 years ago there were no FB groups. In October 2020 FB Groups was launched and 2 years later in October 2022 there were over 10 million FB groups. 

10 years ago there was 1 well followed machinists' forum, the Mamod forum for steam toys and Harry Matthews' Smokstak mostly discussing full sized engines along with a handful of e-mail bulletin boards. I am not commenting on anything good or bad about this other than that it is simply the lay of the land now and it is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.

So yes.... Please encourage any and all to participate. It is good for our hobby.

Gil