Although small, it's attendance is trending in the right direction with its fifth straight increase - keeping it in the Century.	Chris Palermo, Andrea Wicks, Tom DeMarco and Chris Gnech head a row of merry railroaders.

We broke our player record again this year. We had five games in the first and third heat, four tables in the second heat.  In the Preliminaries, Andy Lewis took top score with 204 for the only 200+ game.  Chad Gormly took top cash with 72 but that didn't prove enough to win his game.  In the 5-player games Tom Bissa and Roger Whitney took top scores with 148 and Carol Haney grabbed top cash with 53.  John Shaheen had the lowest winning score of 62.  Chris Palermo had the lowest cash needed to win with 31.
 
In semi 1, Mike played the silent game, collected money and hit the LA lottery for 21 points to win by 10.  Semi 2, Tom didn't need much cash but played a double LA for 42 points to have 28 more city points than his closest opposition. In Semi 3, Chris wanted to go back to bed and finished his game in 20 minutes. A double El Paso and 21 cash was enough to get the job done.  In semi 4, our defending champion, Kevin didn't play a sign 7 city card but had the most cash to win anyway.
 
    
Semi #1
Rob Kircher      47 cash + 117 cities(11) = 164
Micheal Shea     69 cash + 109 cities( 9) = 178
Grant LaDue      28 cash + 140 cities(10) = 168
Andy Lewis       34 cash + 106 cities(10) = 140
 
Semi #2
John Shaheen     46 cash + 147 cities(14) = 193
Tom Bissa        35 cash + 174 cities(12) = 209
Steve Shambeda   42 cash + 127 cities(13) = 169
Stan Hilinski    39 cash + 121 cities(11) = 160
 
Semi #3
Bob Wicks         9 cash +  22 cities( 4) = 31
Frank Mestre        28 cash +   0 cities( 0) = 28
Chad Gormly      23 cash +  11 cities( 2) = 34
Chris Palermo    21 cash +  20 cities( 4) = 41
 
Semi #4
Paul Rubin       48 cash + 120 cities(11) = 168
Phil White       20 cash + 164 cities(12) = 184
Kevin Wojtaszcyk 49 cash + 158 cities(12) = 207
David Buchholz   36 cash + 124 cities(12) = 160
 
 
The Final had our defending champion Kevin, Chris who was taking his third shot at the title, Tom and Mike who were both new to the rarified atmosphere of the Final.  Cash was pretty close but you had to earn what you got.  Chris took the most cash, but had two fewer city cards than Mike and Kevin.  He hit the lottery drawing two San Francisco cards with one of his 2X discards. The trains worked their way to the Southwest and players pitched their Seattle,  Portland  and  Spokane cards. With four connections in Denver and Dallas, Kevin became our first repeat champion in seven years.  Nine of the ten city cards played by Kevin had at least two connections.
 
Final Scores:
Kevin Wojtaszcyk 37 cash + 138 cities(10) = 175
Tom Bissa        37 cash +  84 cities( 8) = 121
Chris Palermo    51 cash + 112 cities( 8) = 163
Mike Shea        41 cash + 126 cities(10) = 167
 
In the four games I received full trackers (the fifth was over in four turns).  Five different cities hit the 20+ point mark with LA hitting the mark all four times.   Sacramento hit 28 for the highest city (Phil was holding both cards!) When we track cities scoring 15 or more, we added nine more cites to the list. Sacramento, LA, San Francisco, Duluth, Phoenix and Denver all hit 12+ in all four games.
 
I would to thank everyone for playing this year and also specially thank those who brought their games.  

The perfect accessory gift for the railroad gamer who has everything.	The finalists plot their rail lines.