Mark’s Web Site

Welcome!

Welcome to my website! I’ve put together a few pages and articles that relate to my hobbies and interests. A lot of the stuff on this site is focused around my hobby of model railroading. I hope you like it!

Viewing this Site

This site is best viewed with screen resolutions of 1024 x 768 or higher. To access the various pages click on any of the links to the left, or the photos to the right. For best viewing it is suggested that you close your “favorites” window to maximize the viewing width.

What’s New!

The brass clinics have been updated to include the clinics from PCR’s Sierra Memories convention in May 2008. Click here to go to the brass clinics page.

Model Railroading Topics

One of the areas of the hobby that I enjoy is restoring and repairing of old brass steam locomotives. After I acquired my first couple of brass locomotives I quickly figured out that they look great but don’t run worth a darn. At first I just figured out how to make them run a bit better but that didn’t satisfy me for long. I soon found that most of these old engines required a complete drive line upgrade to turn them into great runners.

I’ve put together several rebuilding articles that follow the restoration of a locomotive from the beginning to end. To access any of these articles click on one of the locomotive photos to the right (or one of the links to the left).

At the 2008 PCR Convention I’m presenting clinics on improving brass locomotives. The first two clinics covered troubleshooting and rebuilding, and the third focused on DCC decoder installations. Click here to access the clinics page.

I’ve also put together a photo gallery showing some of my finished locomotive projects. Some of these were complete restorations requiring complete paint stripping and repair. Others started as unpainted tarnished brass. As a minimum all required a re-motoring (most a new gearbox also) and a new paint job. Some of these are painted as fresh from the paint shop, while others are lightly weathered.

I’ve also written up a few articles that describe some enhancements that I made to my NCE DCC system. In these articles I describe a battery charger circuit for the ProCab, and a repeater for the NCE radio system.

Railroad Photos

I have a couple of pages that show photos of the real thing, locomotive 2472, a P-8 Pacific that has been restored to running condition. One set of photos is from the 2002 excursions up and down the peninsula CalTrain line. The second set of photos was taken in early 2003 at the Golden Gate Railroad Museum. I had the pleasure of taking photos while some friends ran the locomotive through the Rent-A-Loco program.

Underwater Photography

Another of my interests is underwater photography. I’ve been a diver for over fifteen years and have been taking pictures with my Nikonos 5 camera for the last twelve years.