Jack's lifetime love of trains began when, as a child, his parents gave him a Lionel train set that ran around the family Christmas tree.  The set was added to with more track, more freight and passenger cars,more accessories and more locomotives each Christmas and Birthday.  As Jack approached his mid teens, he became interested in scale model railroading.  The Lionel set was replaced with a HO gauge layout that Jack and his Dad built.  

Eventually, Jack became more interested in building HO gauge cars "from scratch" instead of kits.  This involved driving to a rail yard with a camera, tape measure and notepad.  One day, Jack turned around to photograph a steam locomotive at work and he was "hooked".  From that day, it was all about steam locomotives at work.  

In the 1950's and into the 60"s, Colorado had plenty of them at work.  The Denver area Colorado and Southern Ry was a good place to start and, while attending college, the Great Western Railway was not too far away.   Multiple trips to Wyoming to photograph Union Pacific 4000 series locomotives followed.  A chance encounter with another railfan introduced Jack to the Colorado and Southern highline between Leadville and the mine at Climax.  Many trips to Leadville were made with Jack's Rolleiflex camera and a 16mm Ariflex motion picture camera, borrowed from his partime employer.  Of course, the Denver and Rio Grande Western narrow gauge lines attracted his attention for multiple trips to Southern Colorado.  All during these years, Jack either rode or chased many Rocky Mountain Railroad Club excursions, including one memorable three day trip on the D&GRW narrow gauge from Alamosa to Silverton with his Dad.  A trip to remember!