First off I'm not your typical railfan. Like the screen name implies I prefer the real thing, not scale models. Part of my interest came from always liking large machinery, be it bulldozers, tractors or graders. After moving to New Jersey in grade school I was then in much closer proximity to railroads on a regular basis. Fast forward to after college. I discovered the internet. No, not my idea but others built it and I came. With it I encountered others interested in trains as well. After having a few bad experiences with amateur theatre groups I hesitated getting involved with any fallen flag or historical groups. Several people I met actually scared or repulsed me in their extremely coarse and somewhat anti-social behaviour. So I observed my interests alone and mostly in silence.
Then in 2002 I became involved with the Volunteer Railroaders Association. It started out as being part of the many volunteer help crews on various projects. No pressure to join the group and they were happy to have another set of hands helping. Over time I met them at various events and projects and became aquatinted with more of the membership. Sane and very normal guys close to my age and older. Much different than my past experiences!
Then in 2004 came an event where I could really help - the VRA website ( http://community.nj.com/cc/railroaders ) was lost due to their web host ( nj.com ) exiting the shared hosting market. It took a few weeks but I resurrected 95% of the site from searching internet archives. At first it was placed on http://www.geocities.com/volunteerrailroaders/ After a domain and server was lined up we launched the new site http://www.vratrips.org/ on Saturday April 10, 2004
Web marketing soon came of age and I was asked to create a Santa Claus Train Ride page and a Easter Bunny Train Ride page. The Easter Bunny Train Ride page was later made into a Easter Bunny Train Ride website separate from vratrips.org to allow it to remain up all year round.
In the fall of 2008 I did some intense research in web marketing to enhance the web presence the VRA had. I created a VRA blog and a website for the Hawthorne New Jersey NYS&W Railroad Station. I also created a Wiki page for the Hawthorne NYSW station . I have a Twitter page now; see http://twitter.com/FullScale4Me