Being as I am new here, in a sense, I thought I would take a minute to introduce myself. I have been receiving the Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine for nearly a year now, and it has been a great resource and motivation to me. Interestingly, in the past year, my model railroad has seen more productivity than ever before. I have made a lot of progress on my layout, and I have both started and finished numerous projects. I cannot say it is entirely related to an MRH subscription, but that is no doubt a part of the motivation! Of course, having an organized train room helps too!

I say I am new to this because, while I have been an MRH subscriber for nearly a year, I only started to even look at the forums and blogs in the past week. Somewhere I read that the magazine was only part of the package. I wondered what I was missing out on, and wandered over to this website to check it out.

Originally, I am from the east coast, New Hampshire to be exact. After high school I bounced around a bit for several years, chasing school and work to places like Utah, Alaska, and British Columbia. I finally found myself in eastern Montana, chasing work again, which might have been one of the last places I thought I would move had you asked me several years ago. It is a bit of a change from living in and near larger cities all my life!

Obviously, I like modeling and railroading, which is why I subscribed to MRH in the first place. When I am not in the train room, I enjoy hiking, bicycling, and traveling. My wife and I get out and see new places as often as we can get the needed time off from work.

I was brought into model railroading when I was seven years old. While visiting my grandparents, my uncle took my younger brother and I down to a nearby hobby shop to look at the model trains. During that visit, he bought me an HO scale Conrail switcher and a coupler pieces of track. Over the years that little switcher saw lots of use and abuse, and unfortunately I no longer have it. However, the collection continued to grow with birthdays and Christmas. Eventually my brother also got some trains, and we both became quite involved in the hobby. Both of our collections have evolved considerably into what they are today.

My current model railroad is an L-shaped industrial and interchange layout. It is still under construction, but continues to grow. I have big dreams of a basement empire, but I suppose I need a basement first. I model HO scale, and I tend to favor more modern equipment. Specifically, I use BNSF as the freight carrier, and Amtrak as the passenger carrier. That being said, I do have a weakness for passenger trains, but the nice thing about modeling Amtrak is that it allows you to purchase almost any passenger car, and call it "private varnish."

In order to support my model train addiction hobby, I work as an engineer for BNSF, in eastern Montana and North Dakota. I would call it my day job, but lately I have seen the railroad more at night! For the most part, I enjoy the job, and I enjoy the fact that every day is different. It certainly gives me lots of ideas for my models too!