About me...

or: How I became a model railroading enthusiast

Allow me to introduce myself: My name is Gerolf Peeters. I was born in 1962 in Wilrijk, but grew up in Berchem. Now I live in Mortsel (all these towns are in Belgium, near Antwerp). I am married, have two kids and have worked since 1985 as a nurse in "De Bijster", a psychiatric-geriatric nursing home (mostly people with Alzheimer's disease) in Essen, Belgium.

Apart from my main hobby, model railroading, I have a major interest in electronics and computing. As a teenager electronics mainly meant music: amplifiers, recorders, sound and light effects, improving (like 'tuning') my audio equipment in general. Later on, electronics also meant sensor- and controlling techniques for my earlier model railroading projects.
My introduction to computing began in 1990, with an old Commodore C64. This is where I taught myself the basics of programming. Later on, when I bought myself an Amiga, I continued programming in basic and assembler. Since 1997 I have owned a PC, mostly used for designing (this model railroad is an example), but I still do some programming (mostly using Visual Basic), or I use the PC to surf the Internet.

My first introduction to train modeling was through a train set my ten-year-older brother got. A simple Fleishmann steam engine pulled some coaches round an oval circuit. Later on, a first layout was made: a large piece of chipboard with some extra tracks and turnouts, and some additional Lima engines and cars. As the board mostly resided in the basement, it became subject to dust and moisture. Every time the board was hauled up to put it on the kitchen table, we had to spent several hours cleaning the rails...

My own first layout I build on another large piece of chipboard fixed in ... the basement ... Sure enough, pollution and rust were the big evils, but it was, at that time, the only room available in the house. Later, when my older brothers got married, a room on the top floor became available. This is where I built a second layout, now using an L-girder frame foundation. It was a simple dog-bone type layout, with one station and a siding. It wasn't big (7 by 9 feet), and was nearly finished. About then, however, I was a typical teenager, and was more interested in, music, a student's life, ... and the layout eventually was cleared.

The first years after marriage, I made a tiny (3 by 4 feet) HOm-layout. Because of lack of space and funds, this was the only option to keep my techniques a bit 'sharp'. In 2001, after buying, rebuilding and paying the mortgage on my house, I finally have time, money and space (three essential conditions) to restart my old hobby.

This website tells the story of the model railroad layout "Marche-en-Bières". I hope this story can help both beginners as well as die-hard modelers to keep doing what we like: model railroading. It is also a means to get reactions on my own project.

Finally, about the name of the layout. People say we can't have a funny name for a layout, because our hobby is a much too serious occupation. I disagree. Model railroading is fun, so it is only natural there is a wink in my project's name. I once saw a model railroad in a Belgian magazine, it had a brewery on it called "Neffe". As there is a fine Belgian beer called "Leffe", but "Neffe", is a dialect word, meaning 'beside' or 'wrong'. I thought this was a good idea to start with. Personally, I prefer other Belgian beers, like 'Duvel' and 'De Koninck'. I had to give it a French-sounding name, so I more or less translated it to 'Duvelle' and 'Boulroie' (Koninck=King=Roie). As there is a town in the Belgian Ardennes called "Marche-en-Famenne", I changed the name of the layout to 'Marche-en-Bières' (=works on beer)... Or as Napoleon said, “An army marches on its stomach.”