Meet Our Officers

As the oldest of 9 children growing up in a 3 bedroom ranch, there wasn't a lot of room for trains.  I grew up with a 4'x8' sheet of plywood, with a single loop of 027 track on it, with a single right-handed turn-out on it.  A few sections of curves & straight track could be attached to it when the plywood was brought into the living room from the garage where the sheet was stored on its side.  My father Merlyn's Marx rolled tin train set from the 30s with 2 "bathtub" streamliners (a Commodore Vanderbilt (it had a reversing unit in it!) and a nondescript engine with a switch sticking out of the top for forward or reverse), a boxcar, tank car, flat car & caboose.  An ancient paper mache tunnel/mountain (with paths on it!), station, semaphore, & tower with spot lights completed the "set".  I thought it was the ultimate!  (Mom still has it in the closet minus the engines, everyone's play literally beat them to death!).  As it took up the whole living room, it could only come out maybe once a month or so for a couple hours.  Gawking at Captain Kangaroo episodes featuring trains & reading whatever books I could get my hands on were pretty cool also.

     Teenage, job, college (oh yeah, girls, but especially Anna), job, getting married, job, law school, & job put trains on hiatus for some years.  Around 1990-1 Anna got me a K-Line 027 Hershey train set & kept getting me the add-on cars & accessories that came out for the next several years.  A 2 bedroom 800 sq foot house (which was only 150 feet from the 2nd busiest rail corridor on the North American continent), did not leave much room for setting up very often, but I did enjoy it occasionally with my Dad (especially given the nature of the train set.  To briefly explain:  he thought Hershey's chocolate was "nature's most perfect food").  We knew of SARMC & was thinking of joining about 1994, but cancer and Dad's death in August, 1995 derailed that.

     In 2000, Frank was born, & our proximity to trains (& all the Brio & Thomas trains we & others got him) re-awakened my interest.  The 2004 movie The Polar Express (I now have all Lionel's TPE stuff!), along with a December, 2004 visit to a train show at the Rec Center, where I picked up a WGH (World's Greatest Hobby) booklet, with a SARMC flier in it led to me dropping into a mtg in July, 2005, joining, & in 2008 I got "railroaded" (you guys (& gals) said it 1st!) into the Presidency.

     [Frank back in the late '00s got mainly (but not exclusively) Thomas AND predominantly Pennsylvania RR.  The PRR is particularly interesting as Frank's namesake, Anna's dad, worked for the PRR (we didn't know until Frank showed him a PRR acquisition)!

     Anna got me a classic “warbonnet” Santa Fe passenger set & I am working on acquiring some SF freight pieces.  I am also acquiring some “space/military” rolling stock/accessories!]

     I am an O-scaler, but am happy to help all divisions, as well as the Club as a whole.  I am hoping to get a lay-out built/going with Frank (& Anna) within the next year [now that I'm approaching retirement].  SARMC, as well as Classic Toy Trains magazine has given my lots of experience & ideas I want to try.

     Apart from the trains, what interested me most about SARMC was & is the emphasis on FAMILY.  Families have a history.  So does SARMC--28+years worth [now 43+]!  Families have their ups and downs, their spats and their celebrations.  So has SARMC.  What matters is that everybody remembers that SARMC is its members:  we are family.  We need to respect each other & our history & traditions as our family heads down the tracks of time into the future.