Tony Koester

Biography: After twenty years of editing telecommunication journals, Tony Koester took on more work with Kalmbach and subsequently became the editor of the annual Model Railroad Planning, as well as a contributing editor and the "Trains of Thought" columnist for Model Railroader. He has also written nine books for Kalmbach which may have found their way onto your shelf.

Tony Koester popularized the idea of proto-freelancing with his HO scale model railroad layout, the Allegheny Midland (AM), along with his friend Allen McClelland's Virginian & Ohio. Blending elements of Nickel Plate (NKP) equipment and operation with Chesapeake & Ohio (C&O) structures and scenery, the AM would be the NKP's plausible West Virginia coal-hauler. Tony believes that modeling the prototype is, in some ways, easier than doing freelance mainly because all the hard parts have already been done for you by the railroad that you’re modeling. If you want to know what the track plans are, just look it up on the Internet. If you want to know what certain towns looked like, find some pictures of the area or, better yet, go visit the place and see for yourself. Take your own pictures of the landscape, the tracks, the trains, the yards, and the structures; bring them back to your railroad room at home and use them as reference photos.