Member Profile
Bill Bryan

Bill is a newcomer to railroad modeling and to the Raleigh area, although like all the other members, he has always loved trains. As a small boy in the 1950's, he took several trips across the United States with his mother, following his Navy father's many relocations — Bill has four brothers and sisters, each born in a different port city. One of his earliest memories is riding in the observation car of the Santa Fe Chief with a real Indian chief in full costume. His mother often tells the story of the time she cracked her head on an upper berth while tucking him in to bed, because he promptly told her, "Mommy, stop bleeding on my pillow!" He rode Amtrak from Washington D.C. to Burlington Vermont and back a number of times while attending U.V.M. during the 1976–1977 school year, and has taken day trips to San Diego on the Coaster often.

Bill graduated from Georgetown University and University of Southern California law school, and was a lawyer for 16 years in California, but he became disenchanted with practicing law in 1999. He then became an M.C.S.E. (computer network engineer) and worked for two years as manager of technical support for a small software company. The company had the world's worst customer manuals, and Bill realized that technical writing was a good way to take advantage of the writing skills he developed as an attorney. So he entered a program at California State University and became a certified technical writer. He had often visited North Carolina, so when his wife said she wanted to move back East to be closer to the relatives, he suggested Raleigh as an ideal city in which to live. They arrived the day before Thanksgiving, 2002. Bill is also very active in the Carolina Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication and the Wake County Democratic Party, and his other hobbies include reading history, woodworking, camping, sailing, and hiking.

What really spurred his interest in modeling was his son, Willy, who is a train fanatic. When they lived in Orange County, California, Bill's parents gave Willy a Thomas-the-Tank-Engine starter set on Christmas, 2001, when he was just 2 1/2 years old. He has been interested in everything train-related ever since. He and Bill began doing many train activities around Southern California — riding the Coaster, visiting the San Diego Model Railroad Museum, and visiting the San Diego Railroad Museum 50 miles east of the city, where they rode in the diesel cab for a few miles. In September, 2002, Bill's parents joined him and Willy for a "train vacation" around central and northern California. The highlights were the California State Railroad Museum and the "Day out with Thomas" at Roaring Camp Railroad near Santa Cruz. Since arriving in Raleigh, he and Willy have visited the Wilmington Railroad Museum and the North Carolina Transportation Museum in Spencer.

Willy seems to have a permanent fascination with trains, and Bill had been looking for a useful hobby that he can share with his sons (at the present time, Alex is too young to really participate). Now that we have discovered the NRMRC and the joys of NTRAK and DCC, we will probably begin working on our first module in mid-2003.