Potomac Chapter 2026 Board Minutes

Minutes of 2026 Directors Meetings

Potomac Chapter National Railway Historical Society, Inc.

February 12, 2026

Zoom video conference with participation by:
Gordy Bjoraker, President John Sery, Vice President Bill Holdsworth, Secretary	Stephen Sery, Director at Large Chuck Greene, Director at Large Doug Scott, National Representative
Guest: Marc Laborde
Not participating: Jay Creswell, Treasurer

Gordy called the meeting to order about 8:05 p.m.

Bill made minutes of previous meetings available.

Board members discussed possible recipients for small grants. They mentioned the National Capital Trolley Museum and Railway Mail Service Library.

Bill reported that he has received 50 renewals for 2026, giving us 61 active members. Bill plans to send reminders to those who haven't renewed.

Doug reported that arrangements for the 2026 haven't been finalized. He said that the processing is slow for renewals made via postal mail.

Directors agreed that the December holiday social on a Saturday afternoon was successful. We should repeat that format for 2026.

Marc Laborde briefed on the status of his work with the Flack slide collection.

He has built a spreadsheet cataloging 4,000 of the 7,300 slides.
He has scanned many of the slides and stored them on Google Drive. To conserve space, those scans aren't the highest quality.
He would like to make these images available to railfans, members, authors, and magazines. He thinks Microsoft Excel and Google Drive are good tools.
Some slides are missing. Some were extracted for a potential book about the Norfolk & Western. Bill volunteered to inquire about those slides.
Directors discussed options for scanning the slides. Doug offered to contact Mitch Dakelman, who manages the image collection for the national NRHS.
John suggested using a commercial service to scan the slides. He volunteered to get quotes. One concern with that approach is that we must be able to map the image files back to Marc's spreadsheet.

Bill has reserved the Council Office Building Lecture Hall for the March and June membership meetings. Bill won't be available to administer the April Zoom meeting.

The meeting adjourned at 9:35 p.m.