Rick grew up in Southern California, spending his childhood chasing trains through Cajon Pass and Tehachapi, which included watching the Southern Pacific construct the new single-track line alongside the existing Santa Fe/UP double track from Colton to Palmdale in 1966/67.   His favorite railroad has always been the Southern Pacific, despite the fact that his maternal grandfather and great-grandfather both worked for the Wabash (and probably because they both worked in office management and not on the trains).  

 

After college and a stint in the military, Rick moved to northern California, where he spent his career as a paramedic, a police officer, and after retiring, as a law enforcement instructor.   After his house was destroyed (along with all of his model trains, guitars, and his restored 1977 Corvette) in the 2018 Camp Fire that swept through Paradise, California in November, 2018, Rick decided to relocate to the east coast.   He now lives in the Baltimore/Washington, DC area.  He is active in several local model railroad clubs, and is a rail operations docent and conductor at the B&O Museum.  Rick is also currently at work on his basement layout in which, in his world, the Southern Pacific and Wabash not only still exist, but interchange with each other and his fictional short line, the Sugarloaf, Sierra and Pacific.