I feel that we should start this page with explaining how and why I have started to maintain this website.
You can read about how I originally met Marty over here. A few years ago (2023)
I noticed that Marty’s original site had gone dormant, and showed a placeholder site instead.
I decided to email Marty and ask about it. He informed me that it just wasn’t in the cards to keep maintaining it. With his and Agnes’ declining health money was tight, and this was one of the things that needed to be cut to save money.
I asked if I could take it over, and was given the go ahead. After I left the Air Force, I started my career as a
systems administrator, and enjoy this kind of work. The automation aspect of this site is quite enjoyable.
Piecing it together
I started with finding the old website on the Internet Archive. It luckily had all of the text and some of the pictures on the index page, but it was missing the images on all the other webpages…
I knew Marty had a trove of pictures from his railfanning days, and figured he might still have the images for the
website. I reached out to him and huzzah, he had them, with a catch. Marty said “Sure you can have them, come get them.”
I knew I wanted to go get the photos, but traveling to Alaska can take some money, and at that time, things were tight.
In the beginning of October of 2025, I received an email from a friend with news that Agnes had unfortunately passed away. At this point I knew I had to go to Alaska and see Marty.
The 2025 Alaska Trip
The week before Halloween that year, my brother and I hopped on a plane to Alaska. The trip went off without a hitch and we were able to meet with Marty and the rest of the our friends up there. I was able to get the photos I needed to keep this website on the internet.