NMRA Achievement Program

I started my efforts as a model railroad author back in the days when Tony Koester and Bill Schaumburg were at Railroad Model Craftsman.  I was friends with NMRA Master Model Railroader (MMR) #70 Ed Costello and we visited Koester’s Allegheny Midland in the late 1970s.  Ed was working on an article on his OO scale St Anne Railroad for RMC (May 1979) and I helped Ed and our friend Larry Hanlon with some layout photography.  I was encouraged to develop a story on my operating HO rotary dumper and the article appeared in the RMC December 1979 issue.

While the dumper article was in the works, I saw Bill Schaumburg at the Princeton NMRA convention and demonstrated my radio throttle in the gym there.  This throttle was based on Don Fiehman’s SWAT throttle that appeared as a series in RMC in 1977.  My radio version used the guts from a Mattel toy R/C car to drive the SWAT throttle and that article appeared in the September 1980 RMC.

Over the years, I did a number of clinics for MER regional, South Jersey and Susquehanna Divisions of the NMRA and once at the 2006 NMRA National convention in Philadelphia.  Topics have included prototype aggregates, but most centered around my use of the JMRI software and my NCE and RR-Cirkits DCC hardware to bring my Quaker Valley Railroad to life in operating sessions.  Recently I also presented the JMRI topics to the Railroad Prototype Modelers – Valley Forge and the East Coast Santa Fe Modelers groups.

All of this work on articles and clinics completed the requirements for my first NMRA Achievement Program award as Model Railroad Author.  I received that in July 2009.