I'd also like to thank David for maintaining this discussion board for all to enjoy and also allowing most of the heated discussions that take place to remain. It's nice to have a place like this where one need not worry about offending someone or something as long as there is some merit to what's said.

But the above being said, it's always amusing to see posters who proclaim their "Freedom of Speech" has been violated when their nonsense does need to be deleted ... as if they actually believe this site (or Trainorders) is some sort of public property and the First Amendment applies to privately-owned websites.

Just a note about Trainorders I've been wanting to get off my chest for a while. I was one of the old "Heritage Members" whose account was deleted with hardly any advance notice a few months ago and I took great offense to it. I would hardly call it freeloading as the webmaster (we know the name) seemed to imply. I was able to post, and that's all that was different about those accounts as opposed to what the public could do. I could not view any media or pictures so I don't see what the problem or burden was. Instead of being grateful to the few remaining original members who helped build the site to the status it became but never became paid members, they were all just dropped with little advance notice.

As I said, he has every right to allow what he wants and delete whatever he pleases, but my favorite Trainorders episode was when the UP had just taken over the SP and was in the middle of the meltdown. Nobody was allowed to say a bad word about the UP for fear of upsetting John Bromley, the UP public relations man who would frequently answer questions. It got to be quite humorous.

I rarely posted the past few years before I was cutoff because most of the people there now post nothing but nonsense and stupid questions to which the answer can be found with simple research, but it was nice to be able to chime in when something needed to be said.

I hope more people continue to realize how much better the discussion is allowed to be at Altamont Press and more people come over away from the "dark side."