By Paul Arvidson

Author  Bio Paul is from the Midwestern state of Iowa.  His first home as a youngster was in a small town near Des Moines where the dining room window faced the railroad tracks.  He never tired of watching the seemingly endless cars roll by.

Paul Arvidson is from the Midwestern state of Iowa. His first home as a youngster was in a small town near Des Moines where the dining room window faced the railroad tracks. He never tired of watching the seemingly endless cars roll by. As a child he received his first train, about Large Scale size, which was a steam locomotive with cars all made from press cardboard.

All the pieces had to be punched out of sheet and assembled by hand. His father helped him to assemble the train made of tongues and slots. Although this train was lost when he moved to the Mississippi River, but there were new trains like the Rock Island Lines that had daily passenger runs to Chicago and the Golden State Limited to points west. He was fortunate enough to ride them while growing up.
He traveled on and off for the next thirty years until his DOD (Department of Defense) retirement. He maintained an interest in trains but did not begin collecting cars or engines until after his retirement.

He collected a few engines and cars at first and then put in a small pond with a double flat loop with the assumption that it takes almost the same time and labor to pour one loop as it does two. He continued collecting engines and cars and progressed to building bridges, trestles and converting a number of engines to R/C. He says, "This was all fun and I could take my engines anywhere and run on my friend's layouts.

Sometimes, I could even control their trains too." The last year or two his interest has been in building viaducts and DCC (digital command control). He converted all his new locomotives and sound systems to DCC. Now the layout can run trains on DC, DCC and R/C but the integration (hard wiring) is not complete. This year he plans to DCC triple dash nines on the trestle grades and add a very steep cog-wheeler route which is a DCC conversion.

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