WELL HERE WE ARE, at our fourth issue. With this publication, the Northwest's Own Railfan marks a full year of operation, and we begin to plan our anniversary issue. What began as merely window-dressing on a personal site has become a small but established webzine.

Making the one year mark gives us pause for reflection on what we've accomplished, and on what we could do better. Changes are in the air, and indeed, some changes have already begun.

One is the disappearance of Extra Section. Conceived of as a PNW only rail newswire, this service simply took too much effort to keep up in addition to guiding the zine as a whole. As spring wore on, the posts became more and more infrequent. Attempts to bolster it with other correspondants met with little sucess. And the fact is, there isn't much need for Extra Section, when there are already numerous newswires and online forums where such content can be had. There's no point in reinventing the wheel, and as it was distracting me from the core concepts of NWOR, and with some regret, this feature was dropped with this issue.

While it lasted, it would not have been nearly as sucessful, if it weren't for Tyler Welsford, who acted as our "Victoria Correspondent", keeping the newswire up to date with BC happenings. Thanks, Tyler!

ONE OF OUR GOALS is to get one issue ahead. And in a roundabout way, we're getting there. We already have at least two feature pieces in the works for the next issue, which should prove very interesting material. And by getting one issue ahead, we hope to increase quality level of photo reproduction somewhat, as we'll have more time to spend on scanning and editing.

MEANWHILE, YOU CAN HELP guide NWOR in the coming year in one key way: contribute! The main reason that NWOR exists is as an outlet for PNW railfan writeres and photographers, both established and "new talent". With more contributors NWOR can increas it's size, depth, and frequency.

So come join our community. It's only a few clicks away.