Mark inspects what is belived to be Cornwall Ore Bank locomotive number 5, located in Tannersville, Pa.

Mark has been interested in railroads for as long as he could remember; the roots for his study of (or obsession with) the railroads associated with the mining at Cornwall grew out of countless bike rides along part of the Cornwall Railroad near his home since a young age. Mark later became curious to know more about the railroad bed he had spent so many hours riding along, and began studying the line in 2002. As Mark started to learn about the rail line, he became quite fascinated with what was discovered, leading him to want to know more.

Mark chose to do his Eagle Project for the Lebanon Valley Rails-To-Trails. One day, while driving past the Cornwall & Lebanon Railroad iron bridge in Cornwall, he realized that the local rail-trail failed to mention anything about the railroad’s fascinating history. His solution was to create two professionally printed signs that gave a summary of the railroad’s history and showed using copies of vintage photos what the area used to look like. One sign is located within sight of the iron bridge in Cornwall that originally gave him this idea, and the second one stands in Mount Gretna in front of the old station’s foundation. Part of the project involved clearing away the brush from the Gretna station site.

During his college years, he volunteered for the Reading Company Technical & Historical Society to help restore Reading Company locomotives and rolling stock. During the summer of those years, Mark worked for the Cornwall Iron Furnace. While there, he started a project to create an N scale model railroad of the Cornwall area circa 1912 focusing on the mining and railroad operations. This layout is still in progress. After college and while living in Middletown for a couple of years, Mark on occasion helped out the Middletown & Hummelstown Railroad's with restoration work. Around the same time, he volunteered regularly at the Lebanon County Historical Society - perhaps the single best source of information on the Cornwall RR, C&L, and Cornwall Ore Banks.

Today his interest in railroading primarily involves modeling and studying its history. Mark works for a class one railroad as an electrician performing troubleshooting, repair, modifications, and routine maintenance of diesel-electric locomotives. He lives in Lebanon County with his wife Trinity and has already claimed a portion of their backyard for the construction of a large, insultated shed or metal building to house a model railroad depicting the Cornwall Railroad in 1907.

With each new piece of the puzzle that is found, the attraction of the local railroading history is bound to keep him searching for many more years to come.