Tom the Centurion

[John Ashworth]

Yesterday evening Tom Macrery reached his century - 100 posts on the FOTR forum. Congratulations, Tom!

He joins five other three-figure friends: centurion Marc Russell, bicenturion Gabor Kovacs, and tricenturions Chris Janisch and Dylan Knott. Still a few dozen short of his millennium is Steve Appleton in the 900s.

Nathan "Trainman" Berelowitz is still the only person to have reached four figures honestly. Site Administrators Kevin Wilson-Smith and John Ashworth are some way ahead of him but this is due to posting a lot of administrative messages as well as literally hundreds of photos on behalf of others.

Keep posting!

[Tom Macrery]

Thanks, John

And kudos to Nathan who achieved his milepost by being contentious in posting, often humorous, replies to almost all of the new topics. This is encouraging to all of us posters.

And John, often when I go to 'New Posts', your name figures prominently. You often give us the 'overseas' news. So I imagine you would be in your millennium even without your 'extras'. How many are you, exactly?

Kevin, well, what can we say? I guess your MSTS posts and model posts alone, along with the HO layout you're building, would account for a significant portion of your thousand plus.

As for Steve A., I think we all appreciate the portion of his 900 plus which give his concise and insightful comments on our trips and other operational matters.

Congratulations and thanks to all you guys for your posts and administrative efforts.

[John Ashworth]

Tom, I'm on 4,687 (make that 4,688 as soon as I click "submit"!) and Kevin is on 2,255.

It's true we both post a lot out of our own interest - me, as you say, on African and international stuff, Kevin on MSTS, model railways and other things. But in the early months of this forum Kevin and I put a lot of effort into "populating" it with posts, so that there would be some basic structure and content for new users to begin to post into. And it's still true that Kevin, Steve and myself do a lot of posting on both forum administration and FOTR administration (some of it in private parts of the forum which are not visible to other members). In the early days many users were a little afraid to post their pictures themselves, so they sent them to us and we posted for them - literally hundreds, as I said above. Now all that remains is to persuade Trainman to post his own photos and then we can all retire... (only joking, Nathan - I'll keep posting them for you as long as you keep sending them!)

For those who don't know, Tom is FOTR's resident wordsmith, with a tremendous interest in words in general and a hunger for new ones. He often comes up with obscure railway-related words and I would encourage him to post more of them for our general edification.

Tom can probably tell us what sort of centurion we should call Steve with 930 posts - what is the prefix for nine? Or maybe an antemillenarian?!

[Steve Appleton]

Congrats and well done, Tom, for your interesting and thought provoking posts and your great pics. As for the obsure words, that's because they are in a language most know little of, American! Maybe, like Mike H, we should learn the language too!

[Mike Haslam]

Steve, you should know well enough that Brits speak only English, and if not understood, simple speak slower and more loudly.

Yes, I am becoming used to going up in elevators and washing my hands at the faucet. Through watching TV programs on trains (Tuesday night is great "Extreme Trains") I now understand many of the terms Tom used. The other thing I have noticed is that a few people around here now refer to things being "lekker' and of the "Braai" on Sunday........... I wonder where they got that from.

[John Ashworth]

And in between the lekker braais we need to see a few more posts from the USA on this forum, Mike - you're slipping far behind our new centurion!

[Mike Haslam]

John, I am doing plenty of slipping in the snow and ice. We have a storm warning for 12 inches of snow on Wednesday.

However, my driver training and shedman work has come in handy. I tackle the hill out from the house as though I am starting a 800 tonne load - and it works a treat. The old "war pony" goes up the hill as sure footed as 2650!

[Nathan Berelowitz]

Jo;;y good Tom. I am actually surprised at the amount of your postings as with the other guys. Excellent!