Jim Fellows
I have been involved in model railroading all my life. Both my grandfather and mother worked for the New Haven Railroad. My first real train set was a Tyco Chessie System with a big Alco C630 as an engine. Over time I discovered model train magazines, Athearn locomotives and cars and in my mid-teens joined a local club in Manchester Ct, the Silk City Model Railroad Club. Joining a club really improved my modeling skills, I learned how to detail locomotives and use an airbrush. I also Joined the New Haven Railroad Historical Society, another sources of inspiration and railroad knowledge.
After high school I went to college in Rochester, NY. My modeling slowed down a lot, but I did and met a few people in the hobby. I met my wife, Renee, while in school and moved to Buffalo NY after graduation. We later moved to southern NH and started our family, my two now grown, sons Alexander and Joshua.
Over time I have narrowed my focus on the New Haven railroad, picking a secondary line to model, the Norwich and Worcester line. This was the New Have’s gateway to Northern New England, with much of the traffic going to and from Maine. It is a single-track main line witch also crosses over two other NH branch lines giving many operational possibilities. On the north end of the line, it interchanges with the Boston & Maine and the New York Central. The layout is well underway with all the bench work up and about 40% of the main line laid. You can follow my progress at: https://norwichandworcester.blogspot.com/ which I am going to make a higher priority to keep it up to date.
I am also a member of the North Shore Model Railroad Club in Wakefield MA. That is where Brian and I met. You can see the club at: www.nsmrc.org . This gives me an opportunity to run large trains and learn new techniques and expand my network of modelers.
I also am an active participant at the New England Prototype Modelers Meet https://www.nerpm.org/ and the NHRHTA Convention https://www.nhrhta.org/ doing clinics and displaying models.
Welcome aboard!
Brian C. Johnson
Long ago and far away, Brian’s uncle David built him a basic oval HO scale layout on a plywood sheet supported by two wooden sawhorses. That sparked the young child’s imagination. Add in growing up on the Northeast Corridor at Princeton Junction, and you have the beginnings of a lifetime love for trains!
I have been in some form of IT for my entire working life, but I’m currently working on bringing a vision of a next generation of Escape Rooms to reality, something I’ve been working toward for well over a decade.
I’ve lived around the country, from New Jersey to Louisiana, Massachusetts to Texas, Los Angeles, back to Texas and now back to Massachusetts where I’ve settled down. So my interests in railroads spans fairly far! My primary modeling is the Corridor from the late 70s to early 80s with NJ Transit, Conrail, and Amtrak (sorry Penn Central fans), but I also dabble in the Pennsy. LA and Texas brought me Metrolink, Union Pacific, and Santa Fe. My ‘homebrew’ railroad is the Kingston and Western, a fictional railroad from Kingston, RI, through CT and NY, to Chicago.
My home layout is very temporary, an L-shaped set of benchwork I can experiment on track design and operations. My passion centers around ops, having designed several ops sessions for the North Shore Model Railroad Club (http://nsmrc.org) as well as an updated car card/waybill system. Within that, my focus is on passenger operations, an oft-overlooked opportunity for some very interesting possibilities!
Set the signal to highball, and let’s ride the rails!