I am getting a sinking feeling I might know who this person could be. Growing up in Florida I knew lots of train buffs and I knew of a guy named James who easily could fit the bill here.
If anyone familiar with the person please PM me with a last name and town (or just the town at the least), I gotta know if this is the guy I think it might be...

One operation I was with had a basic model railroad set up, left to the museum as part of an estate.

We had one member whose "Asperger's Syndrome hobby" apparently involved endurance-testing various model railroad locomotives and various mechanical adaptations/conversions thereof. He would come to the model railroad and set it up with a continuous loop, and simply watch the locomotive and a standardized train behind it go round and round and round......

..... and round and round and round and........

The individual in question quite plainly appeared "several bricks short of a load," but was eventually entrusted with the building's security code and the keys to the model layout room, and we tossed a phone line out to the room as well. I was told that he was on the property at all imaginable hours of the day and night, running various trains around and around. At one point, supposedly someone showed up at night in the dead of winter to find him bundled Eskimo-style, breath puffing from his coat hood in the unheated room, with several more engines running around.....

The excuse? "It's another set of eyes and ears on the property," the group's president said. "And he's so random that it keeps would-be vandals or burglars at bay."

We've gotten a few at the Western Pacific RR Museum in Portola. Due to the shakey handwriting, it appeared to me to be an older guy. A brochure and a typewritten letter back in February and we haven't (to my knowledge) gotten any more of these letters. I too miss the old days of actual letter writing (though I prefer to do it on the computer and sent the reply on museum letterhead), and you never know about some folks, so what the heck? I'll send a reply. At worst, you've made someones day, at best, he may be a potential donor, or one of the next great railroad historians. People are funny like that.

Tom Carter
Director, Webmaster
Feather River Rail Society
Western Pacific Railroad Museum
A 501(c)3 Non Profit Corporation
Portola, California
www.wplives.org
tomwcarter@gmail.com

Mr. Mitchell,

As someone who spent most of his adult life before retirement working with children and adults experiencing a very wide range of mental, emotional, and physical challenges, I need to ask you to bag the use of stereotypes as descriptors of behaviors that I dare say you don't have the education or experience to diagnose or interpret. What you describe as "Asperger's Syndrome hobby" could equally be Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or any of a half dozen or so different causative factors used to describe a certain behavior set. Used in the present context, in the manner in which you used it, such a descriptor is little more than a name-calling put down and is irrelevant to the purposes of this forum!

Ditto the slang "several bricks short of a load." Come on. You're an adult. You can do better than that.

Mike Rowe

1) I saw the individual.

2) I've spent enough time with the English language, and in a town with a "center" for the mentally challenged on the outskirts of town to know that WHATEVER term is used becomes "politically incorrect" after about a generation, thus spurning yet another search for the next "polite" term. In my lifetime I've seen "retarded," "mentally disabled," "mentally challenged," "differently abled," and "special," among others, come and go.

3) Consider the character of "Dr. Sheldon Cooper" on CBS's "The Big Bang Theory": I'd certainly use the term "several bricks short of a load" for him in spite of his alleged superior scientific intellect.

4) Exhibit A; The Independent (U.K.), 14 September 1991, and most other British newspapers that day.....

I rest my case.

Mike

I got a couple of PMs with the info for the person in question. I have confirmed this wasn't the person I thought it was. Nobody I know in Florida knows this guy or has heard the name. The funny part is two pals of mine there both remarked that it sure sounded like a guy we all know in another part of the state.I must agree with this. My wife's family used to deal with 'special needs' kids and my Father-in-law pretty much says the same thing, that he couldn't keep up with whatever non-offensive term was in vogue that month to describe them.

This thread is starting to remind me of the Stan Freberg song Elderly Man River.

Your choice of words, Mr. Mitchell, are irrelevant. It is the attitudes that lay behind them that concern me. They are attitudes likewise betrayed in some of your postings directed at other participants in this forum.

PS. A newspaper article from Great Britain, printed 21 years ago, excuses nothing.

Mike Rowe

Mr. Rowe is absolutely correct. There is no "them". There is only "us".
THis might be a good time for moderation.

"We are all insane--only to different degrees."

Or, as the sign jokingly says, "You don't have to be crazy to work here--we'll train you!"

I started this thread not to denigrate or mock anyone, but to find out if we were the only ones dealing with a "problem" correspondent.

I've since been informed, via PMs, that this individual is now targeting at least one group/agency where a written response to all mail inquiries is required. I would be most interested to see if that policy continues after the somewhat "typical" approach by this person.

Some groups I have worked with have found ways to harness the capabilities of [fill in the blank with whatever term won't offend you]. I've seen a wheelchair-bound retired teacher market a line to schools and develop teaching plans for field trips. I've watched an autistic youth grow to someone of quite some use in the shop.

And I have also watched another (non-rail) group denigrate and rebuke for years an extremely knowledgeable and passionate individual who deserved a promotion to "staff" but was instead kept as a low-level "grunt" because they didn't like him or couldn't see past the persona he presented in person (stuttering, stammering, and other speech impediments). I even outlined for them the best possible way to apply him--since he had communications problems one-on-one, make him a webmaster-type communications type for the whole year instead of just during the short operating season, one with local knowledge of the area (unlike most of the staff). His e-mails, forum posts, etc. were wonderful, intelligent, and knowledgeable. The group ignored me, but eagerly kept me around as top staff because they needed certain technical skills from me. Eventually, I ignored them and didn't return.

If you have a better approach, I'm sure the gentleman in question whose letters started this thread would be happy to add you to his mailing list......... What address should we give him, please?

I am not yet moderating, but watching...Lets be careful...

Randy

And now I'm hearing the theme music from "Hill Street Blues".........

Is our moderator telling us that this is "Railway Preservation News", and not "Psychology Today"? Let's deal with "coaches" and leave the "couches" to other sites.

HE'S BA-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-CK..............

New address in Florida (he points that out in his letters), same names.

*sigh*