Meet Dave Casdorph – Part OneAmong the things that make Atlas special is its staff, many of whom are avid, active model railroaders with impressive resumes and accomplishments. One excellent example is noted model railroader and historian Dave Casdorph, who joined our Research & Development Department in 2004. (Dave eschews the term, “expert”, characteristically saying, “An expert is someone who can’t learn anything more.”) Atlas, its product lines and its customers have benefited significantly since this internationally known, true Renaissance man came aboard. Dave wears many hats, and offers a unique perspective on the hobby.
Thousands of model railroad enthusiasts have been “tuning in” to his recent addition to our www.atlasrr.com website, The Atlas Modeler, in which he details the finer points of prototype freight cars. Filled with informational photos taken by Dave and many contributors, the Atlas Modeler is a monthly online publication supplementing our more feature-oriented online newsletter, The Atlas RR Report. We think Dave himself makes for a mighty interesting story, so we recently sat down with him and did a little probing of our own. The Early Years Dave received his first train set as a Christmas gift in his home state of West Virginia at about age six. The C&O line ran near his house and he has a photo of his two-year-old self in front of it. Growing up, he maintained his interest in trains, but studied all forms of transportation. Dave spent many years enjoying plastic model airplanes, a hobby he continued during his time in the military. A medic in the U.S. Air Force and a computer operator and artillery man for the Army, Dave is a Vietnam veteran, (as is Bob Lawrence, Atlas O LLC’s National Sales Manager). While attending UCLA on the GI Bill, Dave developed other science-related interests. Always interested in biology, he earned his first degree in Entomology, following that up with degrees in Anthropology and Psychology; all while minoring in Geography. Then, he went for a teaching degree. Dave did his thesis on freight car builders of the United States, focusing on the economic and social reasons for their locations. He began to see a niche for transportation magazines, so he started one! “I had always read technical magazines, but there were none that supported the technical side of transportation and I knew there must be an audience,” Dave said. “My first article was published in English in a Dutch magazine, Lekko, on boats, specifically the Wilmington Transportation Company of San Pedro, California.” That led to the publication of Modern Transportation History, his magazine “geared to the general enthusiast with a technical slant.” But he soon discovered that his readers tended to stick w/their individual areas of interest, so he gravitated to freight cars as he saw a lack of information in that area. “I felt there should be an historical society strictly for freight cars because they run on all the roads,” Dave said. “People responded positively and I began to address their need.” Dave formed the Society of Freight Car Historians and began publishing the Freight Cars Journal. “I wanted to be different,” Dave said. The society is worldwide and ongoing, at one point totaling some 800 members. Although Dave ceased taking paid subscribers, he currently sells back issues of his many books and magazines on his website, www.dgcasdorph.com., launched in 2001. He continues to author books and articles online and in a variety of magazines, including a long stint writing for Model Railroading magazine, in which he published in every issue for twelve years. He has self-published some 40 books and continues to write articles for various historical societies. Dave’s Other Life You might think that all that research and writing more than filled up Dave’s time, but there’s more. For as Dave was writing, he was also teaching, in a place that could certainly fill several books on its own – the Los Angeles County Jail in California, where he was employed by the Sheriff’s Department teaching inmates Basic Skills, Health Science, Abuse Education and more. “I taught almost every course there and set up the first computer class in the jail,” Dave related. “I taught gang members, female inmates, everyone, for 25 years. I saw O.J. Simpson after his infamous arrest, as well as the famous Night Stalker, and had Grizzly Adams in one of my classes.” So how did he end up at the Atlas Model Railroad Company of Hillside, New Jersey? “I was getting tired of teaching, finding all the new regulations frustrating,” Dave said. “Through a mutual friend, I met Paul Graf, (Atlas COO), and Rob Pisani, (Atlas R&D/HO), who said Atlas needed someone to help with product development. I had my interview in December of 2004.” Dave recently moved his family from California to New Jersey, where he has yet to erect his next layout. “I enjoy doing what I do and creating things I can see and feel,” Dave said of his latest career. “Things I looked at in prototype form I can now create in the models.” Next time…It’s all about
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