Meet Robert E. Brown. "Bob" to friends on the east coast, "Gene" to older friends and family in the midwest, he's "Dad" to me. He took me to see my first train at about age 3 ... and all these years later, I remember it ... a big black E unit with the now infamous "PC" on the nose led a stainless steel passenger consist through what had once been the Clinton, CT station. Dad took me for my first cab ride (Edaville #3, about 1973) and as you see here, introduced me to model trains. The photo was taken on the very first day I took the throttle of a model train ... and the rest, as they say was history. The Slate Creek Railway is named for the small ribbon of water in Hamilton, Kansas where Dad fished as a kid. He took me there, once, and while the layout is set in an entirely different place, the name seemed a good one. Dad and I were always going to build a big layout together, but it was never to be ... though he did like to come over and see the Slate Creek Mark I, and even made it to NC to see the Slate Creek in its current form, which, though unfinished already represents a great deal of work, and he could see where it was headed.Dad has brain cancer, about the worst type there is. He's been fighting it for a year now, and its a fight not many win. All of the various work necessary to be a model railroader-- part electrician, part carpenter, part plumber, part builder, and the mentality of an inventor -- all of it I learned from Dad, often by watching him fix and engineer different projects in his own shop. I could always call Dad with questions on how to do something that had me stumped, and he often had not only the answer but the tools or the parts to do it. He came over, engineered and built the swing bridge for the Slate Creek Mark One, on about ten minutes notice. Dad's business card once read "R. Brown and Sons -- If We Can't Fix It, It Ain't Broke." I will always be proud to be part of the "And Sons."
Please keep him, and our family, in your prayers and thoughts.
