About Me

So, today a little background information on myself. Being from SW Ohio, I grew up traveling on the New York Central, Pennsylvania, B&O, N&W, and C&O railroads. I guess my father always knew I’d like trains, especially after my first train set I woke up to on Christmas Day when I was five.

At the age of six, my father started taking me down to the depot in the suburb we lived in to watch the parade of trains coming up and down the Ohio River valley. My first recollection was an NYC freight train coming northbound led by Baldwin Sharks!

At the age of 14 I started a simple L-shaped layout using Tyco locomotives and Blue box Athearn with even some Varney cars thrown in. The layout lasted until I moved away from home at age 18.

College, marriage, career, and kids put a hold on everything until 1982 when I purchased a Nikon 35mm camera and started chasing trains. I would up with 4 double tray slide boxes full. Also in 1982 I believe it was I started work for the Indiana & Ohio railroad as a brakeman/conductor. I ended up my last year with the railroad in 1988 as their area track inspector. I missed the railroad, and still do today, only leaving due to a divorce and my moving out of the area. However, during my time there, I had an offer from the C&NW, however, it would have been as a strike breaker, which I declined. I guess eventually I would have wound up working for Union Pacific!

Enter 2011 when I got the modeling bug, and saw in the December 2011 issue of Model Railroader about a new project layout starting in the January 2012 issue. This was perfect for what I wanted to do and for what railroad I wanted to model. Rushing down to the famous Caboose Hobbies, I started to build the original 4×8 layout with several friends help. My original layout was published in the March 2016 issue of Model Railroader magazine. Little did I realize I’d soon be working for Caboose.

During my time at Caboose let me concentrate on getting the layout up and running, plus kept up my fervor for trains. My discount certainly didn’t hurt either! Leaving Caboose shortly before they closed was a sad event for me personally. So, enter Spring Creek Model Trains, a great shop with great people located in Deshler, Nebraska. They have been my go to shop since Caboose closed, and I highly recommend them.

During the time frame between 2012 and 2017 I was able to acquire some modules to expand the original layout into a U-shape in my detached garage. These were great years, with more model work and operations. My layout was during this later time frame published in the new digital modeling magazine of the Penn Central RR Historical Society.

My layout sadly was taken apart when moving in May of 2022 a year after my wife passed away. It today sits in pieces in a storage unit. My current home has no room in my den for the full layout, as I use this now for my office and workshop for my weathering. HOWEVER, great news! I think I can use one module to have a small switching and display layout, so stay tuned for this, as I’ll include news of this project here as well!

Below are photos of my past layout: