[SEL] What was your best engine trip?

[George Best]

In another attempt to get this group back to engines ;-)

If everyone would tell the story of their best engine related trip that
would keep us busy for a long time.

For myself I have a somewhat hard time coming up with a single best
engine trip. All of the Hell On Wheels Tours (HOWT) that Harry and I
took were very memorable.

The basic concept of HOWT is to visit as many engine collections and
shows as possible during a 2 week period.  We would visit one or more
collections each day and usually travel 500 to 700 miles each day (the
hell part). Most days start out early, and we hit the road to visit a
collection.  Most days end late with us searching for a motel room for
the night and trying to get a bite of food before getting some sleep
before starting the whole process over the next morning.

The first HOWT only covered western states, plus 3 shows.  The second
HOWT included a trip across the U.S. stopping to visits collections all
the way to the Portland Indiana show! Plus a return route including more
collections and another show.

In 2002, we did the European HOWT.  This has got to be the single best
engine trip I've ever been on!! In about 10 days we went through 8
countries and visited over 20 engine collections, plus attended the HMT
show which I consider to be the one of the best shows in the WORLD.
Prior to the start of the trip Harry and I had lined up most of the
collections we would visit, but we managed to add in a few collections
while we were on the road.  Since we're both interested in the higher
quality engines which we can't afford, we focused on the best
collections that we could find rather than going for just quantity.

We met some really nice collectors and saw some fantastic collections.
Most collectors were glad to start up a few engines for us and we even
had a bite to eat or a drink with some of them.

As an American engine collector, I was amazed to see some of the
collections we visited and to see the quality of the restorations and
obvious pride of the collectors in their work. 

It seemed that we saw more pre 1900 engines on this tour than we did on
either of our U.S. HOWT's.

While the HOWT's are a lot of fun, they are also physically exhausting.
After going from sunrise to sunset every day, you need a couple of weeks
to recover after a HOWT!

I don't have another HOWT planned at the moment, but would sure like to
do another one.  Will be hard to beat the EHOWT though.

WAIT George