About the Site

About Me

I'm also a guitarist, avid Dungeon & Dragons DM, computer geek (aka an IT guy), husband and father. Not necessarily in that order.

I'm also officially a professional model railroader now that I have helped built a layout for hire, installing decoders for fun and profit, worked on model projects with several companies, and trying to launch Prototype Junction as a viable operation.

How did I get here?

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The Short Version

I'm a model railroad retread focusing on prototype modeling of the New Haven Railroad in the late '40s, early '50s. I was out of the hobby for about 18 years after high school. This is the third layout that I've started since getting back into the hobby in 2006 or so.

The first was really intended as a re-initiation and test layout and was quickly replaced with something that was intended to be a more prototypical model of the New Haven Railroad in Windsor Locks and Thompsonville, largely so I could model the Connecticut River bridge. As research continued I determined there was no way to successfully model the significant passenger traffic on the Springfield mainline in 1948. In addition, I had been operating on a number of other layouts and I realized that there really wasn't enough operating interest with a single daily local freight.

Thus, this layout and this website.

I have a wonderful wife Laura, and twin daughters, Jessica and Emily. Both were premature, and Emily has significant medical issues requiring her to live more than her first eight years in the hospital.

The other hobbies (I have too many) that take up my time is playing guitar, occasionally at Simsbury United Methodist Church, (and music in general) and writing and running my heavily home-brewed D&D games, among others. Aside from the guitar, most of what I do today I've been doing since third grade.

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The Long Version

If for some reason you want to know more than that, here are all the gory details, well most of them anyway. 

The Early Years

I had a model railroad for as long as I can remember as a kid. I started with an O-27 railroad, along with some Marx O-scale equipment that was my grandfather's. My first layout was up and running before second grade, probably started around first grade (6 years old). I remember where it was in the house, but not much beyond that. I'm trying to see if I can find some pictures of it. I had a nice Lionel Lehigh Valley diesel (we lived in New Jersey).

Anyway, that came down when we moved in the summer between second and third grades. The next layout was an 8' x 8' layout. My dad built the benchwork out of two sheets of plywood with homasote on top. This was in an unfinished room in our basement. The room was only partially excavated, so the floor was uneven and higher than the floor in the rest of the basement by a couple of feet. Other than the train, we had some 4' deep shelves for storage.

The layout, as can be expected, was a mix of everything. Our first HO equipment was a combination Christmas present for me and my brother Brad. He received a B&O F-unit and several Athearn passenger cars. I received a Sante Fe Road switcher, and several freight cars. Brad ended up not being all that interested. I don't really remember him playing with the trains at all. But I spent a lot of time up until we moved just after high school working on it.

The rolling stock and locomotives consisted of all sorts of road names and eras. This included steam, diesels, and a couple of trolleys (including a european-style trolley) all running on the same mainline. Most of the motive power was Atlas, and as far as I can tell, all of the rolling stock was Tyco.

I remember a basic oval around the whole layout, with at least one track across the center, on a an up-and-over trestle set. I'm pretty sure there was a second track with a tunnel. Well, I think I managed to get a window screen mountain built, but I don't think it was ever covered. I would try just about anything I thought was neat. By the early '80s I had a subscription to Model Railroader and I still have most of the well-used issues.

Modeling?

A few of the more memorable efforts:

We went to a club someplace, and they had a subway under a section of the layout. Naturally, this was below the main deck, and I remember it being very cool. So, I had to have one. Since my layout was flat, I simply took some scrap wood paneling (the faux paneling so popular in the '70s) and covered up a corner of the layout and put a couple buildings on top of it.

I wanted to have some water on the layout. I have a little farm on the front section, so I dug out the homasote, added a little scenery, and mixed up some two-part epoxy that came as a double syringe. Naturally it simply seeped between the (and probably into) homasote and plywood since I hadn't sealed it. In addition, it never cured. So the bottom of my "pond" remained wet and tacky.

There was an article in Model Railroader about kitbashing the California Zephyr from a couple of Athearn passenger cars. Naturally, I had to have one. I couldn't get the styrene to bend as the article instructed for the streamlined power car, so I used cardboard instead. I still have it, and should post a picture here sometime.

By my high school years I was getting a little better at modeling, and was building a fairly decent model of a town on the layout. Unfortunately, after moving these were the main things that went missing.

Anyway, after graduating high school, everything was boxed and put into storage when my parents moved. After a few years at their place, it ended up in storage at my place. For 18 years. 

The Later Years

When our daughters were about 2 1/2, we took Jessica on a steam train ride (Emily is disabled and still living in the hospital at this time). Jess didn't like loud noises, so although she was excited waiting for the train, she wasn't sure about getting on it once it was there.

She loved it.

After the ride, Jessica and I were following everybody back up to the car. She stopped and just stared at the big locomotive. She didn't want to get too close, but she didn't want to leave. So I figured that the time may have come to see about pulling out the old trains.

We have a relatively small house, and they had remained in storage with the intention of pulling them out one we moved to a bigger house. So I picked up some track, and set up a simple circle on the floor or kitchen table that we could easily break down. Jessica really enjoyed it.

So I started poking around on the internet, and decided I could build a "test" layout in one corner of the basement. It would be an 8' x 8' layout, but open in the center so I could access all of the track easily. I planned on trying out as many techniques as I could on this layout to prepare for the "real" layout.

Jessica and Laura were out of town for a long weekend, so I decided it was the perfect time to throw together a quick layout. I knew right from the beginning that this was for me, not Jess, but I also like to expose her to as much as possible and let her participate in whatever she'd like.

Jessica enjoyed it, and I was having fun trying out different modeling ideas. I jumped right in, not realizing that for most people nowadays "model" railroading doesn't mean the same thing it did to me 18 years ago. I started with an Intermountain box car kit, and a Branchline Trains heavyweight passenger car, as well as a Branchline Trains REA reefer. Only then did I pick up a couple of Accurail box cars.

Greg Gordon, the owner of the local hobby shop at the time, steered me toward the New Haven Railroad in the transition era. After finding the NHRHTA website, I was hooked. There was a post on the forum at the time that it had become "impossible" to find the Life-Like DL-109s. I took this as a challenge, and soon had five of them. My earliest posts on that site were hysterical (June of 2006). I still have them, but I'm sure you can find them if you care to. I still don't claim to be an expert, but I fake it pretty well.

That test "layout" was never finished, and only lasted about three months. I managed to complete the mainline for a second layout using ripped OSB for the majority of the benchwork and masonite spline for the subroadbed (the benchwork cost about $40).

Progress on the actual layout has taken longer than expected perhaps, with a few steps back and many forward. My tendency to experiment and willingness to go back and rework things that I feel can be better has a big impact. Just like rebuilding/rewriting this site for the third time in 14 years. But after that time, I feel I'm closer to the "end" than the beginning.