A message from your forum's moderator: Sorry for being so late in posting this obituary. Emotionally it has been a bit hard to face up to the fact that our web master John Woodson is gone. This website is now running on fumes and it too will be gone by February, unless something changes.

John Woodson
Bethel Island
who was 67 years old passed on October 23, 2014. John was originally from Houston, Texas. He is survived by his son Shannon Woodson and wife Sonya; brother Jim Woodson and wife Kim, grandson Seth Woodson, and granddaughter Megan Woodson. He was preceded in death by his parents JD Woodson Jr, Marie Wallace Woodson, and brother JD Woodson III.
John obtained a BBA from Sam Houston State University. He was a free spirited, fun loving soul and traveled the country for many years before settling in California. Dad started up and ran Baycom Networks for the last 18 years in the San Francisco bay area. His true passion was steam engines and the technology of that era.
The memorial service will be at Crosswinds Church located at 6444 Sierra ct. Dublin, CA 94568 on November 8th at 11:00 am.



Published in Contra Costa Times on Nov. 2, 2014 - See more at: [www.legacy.com]

At risk of sounding none emotional,in order for the guys to figure out.Who will pickup the baton for John....
From looking at John's Business...it's looking look like he was a small business professional like many of my friends and relatives.
And many like my friend whose family had been in the ma and pa hardware store
business with over 75+ years with change in inheritance tax.you were taxed like personal income in board members under LCC,etc.) and most businesses that are stores would have net worth of 250,000-500,000 so the son had 50% upfront inheriance tax plus the current years
tax and fines and interest.By the time they figured his tax for the year,he was paying 90-95% tax in Texas...California you would add state income for an even high tax load.
Any rate probably getting over personal...need more details on company assets if
(the servers the website is on) contact person and other details on chances needed without airing too much linen in public.

Pat,
What options are there for the website?

Do we need server space now or do we just need an admin for maintenance?
Will they shut down or sell Baycom Networks?
Tom

Options for this website: Will they shut down or sell? This website's rent runs out in February. What day? I do not know. Unless the contract is renewed, the plug will be pulled and everything will be lost, if not already saved to another source. What John's kids want to do is an unknown to me. It should be researched by someone. Do we need space or an admin? Since John was the sole proprietor of the website, I would think that it would be impossible for someone to move in as the administrator without a probate hearing of John's estate and a legal transfer of the site. By the time that has happened, the website will have been shut down. It is my opinion that the easiest way to continue this website of steam information is after first trying to securing the information legally from John's errors' and being unable to do that, the next step would be to forward all of the website's content to a new website, keeping only what would be of value and discarding the rest. An example of this would be what has been done in the past with the photos that have been "borrowed" off of this website and used at other websites without John's permission. The photos are found about everywhere. As I own about half the photos, I do not have any problem with that as it furthers the information about steam cars.

Another thought on the future of the information of this website: I don't see anything wrong with the information from this website being co-shared with more than a few different websites. My thinking on that is so that this problem must not happen again of a sole webmaster having this resource, and upon his passing, everything being lost all over again. By not putting the website information all on one website, the steam information has a better chance of surviving.

SSssstreamer since you got most of the pictures, maybe you could copy Cyclone.
They started out with a business website.Then moved to Facebook.
And this could be done before February...
You may have other options,but just saying...
Many clubs,business,etc. already are.

Arnold, The photos on John's websites are of the small file size due to the website limits of about fifteen years ago. Having the original photos, I still have the full file sizes for today's updated website needs. That is the only advantage that my original files have. On the Steam Automobile Club of America website, a couple of the members have already successfully downloaded all of the stanleysteamers.com website files. When this website goes blank in February, at least they will have a back up of this site to use.

It looks like support has been so strong on SACA website,John's efforts will live
on.The guys have without doubt rallied around....with much more of that and the site could be better than John had dream possible.
And Jim was right about copyrights....I would have more trouble with turbine copyright than you guys on piston.
Frankly with the talk about hybrid this and electric that in automotive interest ...steam has already done that 50 years ago.Combined cycle steam is the reigning
champion on efficency...even on the lightplant gas turbine, steam comes into play
with you getting double the hp and half EGT temperature with water injection being somewhat of engineering corner stone at Westinghouse among others.
I think in time more guys will be looking at turbo/turbine even if they are diehard piston steamers on a modern steam car.Use what was learned at modern steam plants.
Getting a little long winded,Bye for now.