By Rick Henderson LSOL.com Associate Editor

Author  Bio It's been ten years already? How time flies when you're having so much fun in such a great hobby.

Ten Years With LSOL

It's been ten years already? How time flies when you're having so much fun in such a great hobby. I actually started in G-gauge railroading, converting from HO gauge in 1985, making this my 20th year in this gauge. While I do have interests in most things railroad from modeling to writing, G-gauge is my roots.

In 1995 I was deeply invested in G-gauge trains, with most of my locomotives from LGB and my American style cars from USA Trains. Garden Railways magazine was the source of information at the time, but by the time it arrived, the information was already three or more months old, which is simply the nature of print media.

I was fortunate to come across this neat little website, the only one of it's kind about Large Scale Trains. My main interest at the time was finding out about new products in this fast expanding hobby scale and to find other G modelers in my area. I found both and much more. Right away I found that there were a lot of other people not just in this country, but also around the globe, looking for like-minded people. LSOL introduced me to the power of communicating directly with fellow hobbyists on the Internet all over the world.

My experience with LSOL gave me new knowledge of possible research resources on the Internet, which prompted me to develop the ShayLocomotives.com web site and then take on the Shay Locomotive book project.

I got to know Jon DeKeles fairly well right away. Soon after finding the chat room and learning how to post a picture, I was learning how to create my own images and created one called a chat gif that would post off my local ISP site into the LSOL chat room. Soon I was getting requests from other chatters to do one for them and had to limit the size and change to a little boxcar for each person. About the time I had over fifty cars posting into the LSOL chat room regularly from my site which was often rather slow, Jon contacted me about moving those images onto the LSOL server to speed up their posting.

It's been a good first ten years. I still do lots of free chat cars along with a few other odd jobs around LSOL. Beyond the obvious benefits of all mater of G-gauge information I feel the members of LSOL have been my support family through some rough times like a divorce, the loss of over 300 brother firefighters on 9/11, a heart attack and other medical problems. I have met a number of great people here that I can contact directly and trade ideas with, and I have never actually met several of them. Spending any time on the site is a joy, especially when other things in life may not be.

A great first 10-year start LSOL!

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