Operated by a solid staff of railway employees, railfans and model railroaders, the roots of the world-wide community of TrainNet.org go back to early 1986 when the CompuServe ModelNet Forum, run by Doug Pratt of Pratt Hobbies, opened two railway oriented message boards. These boards proved to be wildly popular and on 1 February 1989 spawned the CompuServe TrainNet Forum with four staff members: Bill Havrilla, Corky Price, Dorr Altizer, and Jeff Kucsma. To commemorate our beginning date as a stand-alone forum, the steam locomotive represented in our logo is numbered 289. The TrainNet Forum was a busy and lively gathering place for railroad and railway fans, modelers and employees for the next twelve years with over 19,000 members at it's height in the early 1990's, at the dawn of the Internet and the World Wide Web.

CompuServe (now owned by Time Warner, Inc. and operated by it's AOL division) closed all of it's "hobby" forums, including the TrainNet Forum, in the late 1990's and early 2000's. So, on 1 November 2001 the forum was integrated into TrainNet.org with message boards, twice-weekly moderated conferences, a site map for those who don't like clicking on menus and a collection of over 2,600 railway photos plus more than 700 reference files organized in ten fully searchable libraries.

The current staff members are Becky Morgan, Corky Price, Dean Portz, Don Howe, Dorr Altizer, John Horvath, John Reay, John Wallington, Martin Schrader, and Simon Lowe. Read short biographies about each staff member and view links to some of their favorite web sites.

Many fine people, who have moved on to other pursuits and interests, have served on our staff in the past 20 years: Andy Beebe, Bernd Fanghanel, Bob Harbison, Bob Pinsky, Brian Kreimendahl, Colleen Peeler, Craig Bisgeier, Dan Dawdy, Dean Davis, Dick Beebe, Dick Knisely, Erhard Baltrusch, Jeff Jordan, Gerald Kackman, Glen Suckling, Joe Morrison, John Feagans, Lynn Burshtin, Phillip Mackay, Ray Peeler, Scott C. Montani and Steve Blackson.

TrainNet.org is home of the world renowned International Railway Links, the most accurate and up-to-date list of railway links on the planet (read about the history of this effort). TrainNet.org is also home of the coveted Web Gem Award for railroad or railway oriented web sites, one of the most well-known and respected awards on the Internet.

The pages that make up TrainNet.org were created using many versions of Macromedia Dreamweaver (now part of Adobe Creative Suite 4) and CSE HTML Validator to ensure that the design and content conformed to the "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines" from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The pages also adhere to the standards & guidelines of the Internet Content Rating Association, the SafeSurf Internet Rating Standard and the International Webmasters Association.

• The Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) is an international, independent organization that empowers the public, especially parents, to make informed decisions about electronic media by means of the open and objective labeling of content. ICRA's dual aims are to protect children from potentially harmful material and to protect free speech on the internet.
• The SafeSurf Rating Standard is a voluntary rating system designed to protect children, as well as the 1st Amendment (U.S. Constitution) rights of their parents.
• The International Webmasters Association (IWA), a non-profit professional association, is the industry's recognized leader in providing educational and certification standards for Web professionals. IWA's initiatives now support more than 100 official chapters representing over 22,000 individual members in 106 countries. IWA's accomplishments include the industry's first guidelines for ethical and professional standards, Web certification and education programs, specialized employment resources, and technical assistance to individuals and businesses.

Born and raised just a few miles west of the C&O Railroad's Huntington, West Virginia, Locomotive Shops, Dorr has been an active model railroader and railfan since 1972. Five years into his 28 year career in the U.S. Air Force he was assigned (in 1971) to Kinchloe AFB, a Strategic Air Command base in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where his interest in railroads began. While working on top of a B-52H in a swirling blizzard he watched a Soo Line GP30 struggling to drag it's train to Sault Ste. Marie. He was hooked!  Dorr is the owner of Tad Lane Creations, the primary source of funding for TrainNet.org, a Life Member of both the National Model Railroad Association and it's Pacific Southwest Region. He's also a member of the Arizona Rail Passenger Association, the National Association of Railroad Passengers, the NMRA Layout Design Special Interest Group, the National Railway Historical Society, the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society and the Southern Pacific Historical & Technical Society. His favorite railroad is the Southern Pacific, which was absorbed by the Union Pacific Railroad on September 11, 1996. Dorr and his wife (and three cats) live just west of a siding named Lizard Acres (milepost 171.6) on the BNSF Railway line from Williams to Phoenix, Arizona.

Corky began his railroading career as a trainman for the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad in 1977. By August, 1982 he had transferred to engine service and had completed engineer training. Corky worked as engineer and fireman for SCL until he began working for Amtrak in 1986. After a brief time as Road Foreman of Engines, he decided he would rather be operating the trains rather than supervising those who did, so he returned to engine service. Corky still works an engineer's assignment in Zone 5 and is a member of the BLET. His modeling interest centers around the Durham and Southern Railroad in HO scale. Corky lives in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

With the responsibilities of raising and educating a family behind him, Don was able to pursue his lifelong passion for trains in the early 1990's. An HO modeler, his layout is based on the 1940's and 50's steam era. His favorite road is The Southern Railway System and he is a member of the Southern Railway Historical Association. Don also belongs to the National Model Railroad Association and the National Railway Historical Society. A novice railroad photographer, he focuses mostly on Norfolk Southern rolling stock. Don is retired from Snap-on Tools and lives in Gastonia, North Carolina.

Dean was born in 1957 at Evergreen Park, Illinois, with the old C.R.I. & P tracks just down the block. In 1962 he was treated to a train ride to Tempe, Arizona, (where he has lived ever since) and grew up with Southern Pacific, Amtrak and later Union Pacific. Dean works for a major supermarket chain and has been in the business for 27 years except for a short stint at Coca Cola. He's been an HO/N scale model railroader and railfan on and off for 30 years (when work permits), is an NMRA member and has a modest 11 x 12 foot around-the-walls HO layout. Loosely based on a John Armstrong plan, the Ouachita & Ozark RR, the layout is is currently partially dismantled for improvements. Some of Dean's other hobbies include astronomy, building plastic models of all sorts, tropical fish, photography, and recently, RC helicopters, among a few others. Dean lives in Tempe, Arizona.

Becky Morgan was outshopped in 1958 in the railroad town of Bellaire, Ohio, on the B&O Pittsburgh to St. Louis main. She grew up along the Pennsylvania branch line down the Ohio River, at Mile 105, absorbing river stories (a few even true) from one side of the family and railroad tales (a few of those true) from the other. She and her husband, Tom Morgan, have a home schooled son, Gabe, who can be trusted to haul his parents back to active railfanning when other matters intrude. She has written four local histories and is at work on a series of CD-ROMs that are as serious and scholarly as this biography.

Simon was born in 1970 in Oban on the West coast of Scotland. An early interest in trains and railways developed into a particular interest in signaling around 1982 when he started drawing layout diagrams of local railway lines from observation. For his 13th birthday, his parents bought him a ZX Spectrum computer and it was not long before he was writing his own games and railway simulations in Basic and machine code. In 1987 he left high school and moved to Glasgow to join British Rail as a trainee in the field of signal engineering. A fellow trainee introduced him to the narrow gauge Leadhills & Wanlockhead Railway where he is an active volunteer as well as undertaking the duties of membership secretary. Simon is a member of the Signalling Record Society, Railfuture, the Transport Salaried Staffs' Association and an Associate Member of the Institution of Railway Signal Engineers. He is currently employed by Scott Wilson Railways Ltd. as a senior signaling engineer.

Born in September 1965, I spent some of my early years living about 500m away of the Karlsruhe-Basel main line. Maybe that caused an early infection of my interest for railways. Main interest are today's railways, especially in Germany and the surrounding countries, but I also like to do some nostalgic steam trips every year (depending what is offered). Model railway: A small Märklin design with just tracks and no landscape, just like to run the trains. In real life my only connection to the railways is that of an user/customer, I'm still studying history at Karlsruhe University. Martin lives in Baden-Baden, Germany.

John joined the United Transportation Union Public Relations staff in January 1981, and has handled writing and editing duties for the UTU News ever since. His current title is "Administrative Assistant to the International President". With less railroading experience than other staff members, his background nonetheless serves him well. His father, a scientist and politician, exposed the family to computers in the '50s, bringing a time-share terminal into the house in the early '60s. Labor issues entered at an early age through farm work, a paper route, and his grandfather's wholesale produce business. In high school and at Ohio State (B.A., Journalism), he worked in restaurants and retailing, joined a union (Sheetmetal Workers), and wrote radio ads and news articles as a freelancer. Experience as an abstractor with Predicasts, Inc., and Social Security claims representative led the UTU to hire him as editor of the now-defunct UTU Retiree News and contributor to the UTU News. Desktop publishing brought the Macintosh into his life, and a modem completed the scene, immersing him in the world of railfan BBS's. A self-taught musician, he writes "labor contracts" as a band leader, a hobby that continues. He and his wife, Cheryl, and twin sons Adam and Daniel, live in Bay Village, Ohio.

John is a lifelong railfan and sometime N scale modeler. Originally from England, he moved to Toronto, Canada in December 1980 claiming that it would benefit his career in computer systems. The real reason, of course, was to be nearer to the North American railroads he had long admired from afar. In 1992 John moved from Toronto to Bowmanville, Ontario. The official reason for his move was to provide a better environment for his growing family. He insists that the fact that Bowmanville sits between the CN and CP mainlines had absolutely nothing to do with it. John's railroad interests include all things contemporary but he also expresses a fondness for prenationalization British Railways. Since joining TrainNet John has also become a prolific uploader of GIFs and JPGs. This hobby has now grown into a general interest in computer graphics and windows programming. John hopes to translate this interest, together with his background in video and photography, into the video and multimedia publishing fields. John lives in Bowmanville, Ontario, Canada.

John has been interested in railroads since 1950 when a coal truck put a CPR passenger train in the ditch across the street from his home in Ottawa, Canada. His railfan interest is North American railroads, especially CN & CP, and his favorite train is The Canadian on the old CP Rail Route. After moving to Cornwall, John became interested in the movie business and pursued a career as a Motion Picture Projectionist, working from 1966 to 1985 in Toronto. His interest in railroads was rekindled after riding a few steam excursions behind CNR's Northern 6218. In 1985 John took the plunge and hired on as a Brakeman with CN Rail. He was promoted to Conductor in 1987 and to Engineer in 1990. John has been active in union affairs since 1978. He was Vice President of IATSE Local 173, Toronto Projectionist Union, until hiring on CN Rail where he was Secretary for UTU Local 483 for 5 years. Currently, he is working out of Belleville and is a member of BLET Division 189. John lives with his wife of 25 years, Linda, (and Son Mike) in Frankford, Ontario, Canada. Daughter Karen still lives in Toronto pursuing a career in theatrical makeup and special effects.

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