by Matt Gentry

As I find myself creating The PennyRail for the fourth month, I have taken a look back at that time. Why am I doing this already? Well, I’m looking back on it already with a sense of pride. For starters, I was wondering if it were something that I could set a monthly deadline for myself to meet, and so far I have. Score one little victory to me! Although I probably should not count those chickens before they hatch yet…looking at the month of May I don’t have any weekends free at all.

I think that the next bit is the fact that I have been able to become more active in the chapter and in the meetings. Sure, I have gotten around to regularly attending meetings, but I wanted more involvement. As it turns out, this has filled that role for me.

The largest part of my enjoyment of all of this has got to be getting to know more of the chapter members. Sure, I knew the regular chapter members, but outside of meeting night I would rarely see them until the next meeting! Ever since Rick Bivins and I have begun communicating via text message I have been up to date regularly on the happenings of his building and layout, we have gone on spontaneous outings to Gorham, IL, Princeton, IN, Bowling Green, KY and Hopkinsville, KY. On the few trips that I have taken that have been family trips, I have managed to get down to the tracks and watch a few trains and share images with Rick, thus adding to places to rail fan in the near future and thus adding possibilities in my search to photograph the Heritage and special interest locomotives on the nations rail network.

On these few rail fan outings, a few other members have been able to join us. The stories and locations that Donny Knight has told me about in his travels for rail fanning just make me want to get out that much more! I have been working with some of his video recordings and even though it is the P&L loading out coal, I would have never seen any of this footage without having been present and having conversation and hearing the stories.

Thomas Bryan has been along on some of the trips too. And let me just say that I wish I had half of the railroad knowledge that Thomas has read and retained. Even if I were to pick up and read every article that Thomas has, I still would not retain what I read. (I’ll be the first to admit I learn by doing. Learning by reading is difficult for me.)

One of the harder decisions I had to make in my “career” of model railroading was making the switch from O gauge to HO. There were many determining factors that I considered, and to be honest I almost made the switch to N gauge! But in the end, I landed in HO and thankfully Keith Kittenger has opened up his layout about once a month and has allowed me track time with my locomotives and various pieces of rolling stock that I have brought. Just last Thursday I half-hazardly learned how to program locomotive numbers with his Digitrax DCC system. For only having used the system three times for only a few hours each time, I’m pretty happy with myself.

The best part about all of this is that it is just (hopefully) going to continue to get better! Sure there will be slower times with everyone’s work schedule not lining up, the weather won’t always be conducive, or the trains may not be running on a particular day, but what is a chapter or a club all about anyway? I most certainly think the answer is about the camaraderie, learning and self growth and improvement. And what I have found in those categories over the last few months, I wouldn’t trade anything for.

So in the end, here is to the continuation of being trackside at various points around the country, even if it is more local than anything, and to more bull sessions at various home and garage layouts!