06/18/23 @ 06:55 PM EST

the best day of our life thus far

So, for those who were paying close attention in SBN and elsewhere,
today, the 18th, was The Day,

The Peru, IN Trip

Long story short, us and Danni had planned a trip to meet up for the first time, in particular: to meet at Peru, Indiana, to see Norfolk Southern 255 before it gets removed from service. (we would later find out that this was not, in fact, the end of roadrailers. oops! no regrets on this one either way though!)
And somehow, we managed to actually pull it off!!!

(my photo (which, btw, more of my photos can be seen in Ruby's Morii!))

(Danni's photo (more of which can be found in the SBN discord!) (also no, that's not us in the photo, that's Fairport Rails!))
There were also three other people waiting at the same crossing, all filming too! it was neat seeing other railfans in person for once

Another thing to note was that we used this trip to lend over some of our models to Danni, including:
- SP 4454 (and its tender)
- A Mantua SP coach
- MP 2263
and along with that, we also handed over 802 to see if they could figure out what's wrong with it, given that 802 kinda. struggles to do nearly anything
[update! 802 turned out to be just fine actually, and its address was simply wrong, oops...]

(Danni's photo of 802 on their layout,,, so strange seeing our namesake elsewhere!!!)
current theory is that 802's chip is just malfunctioning in some way, since it doesn't seem to be FRIED, but just, not working properly

oh yeah, also, us and them went out to eat after we got photos of NS 255, and after that we went n' saw some MILW coaches that'd been left sittin' around
but, after we took some photos of the two coaches, we unfortunately had to depart and head home 3:

but!!! hopefully, this is a sign that future things like this can happen!!! (and we later found out that they did/will too!!! :3)
and we REALLY hope they do because we've finally gotten a taste of life, and we want MORE OF IT!!!

(written by Ruby)