I want to thank you for visiting my model railroad web site. My name is Peter Vanvliet. I have had a personal web site up since January, 1994. Since 1999 it has been mostly focused on my model railroading hobby. Obviously it has gone through a number of changes, and under various names. However, the overall content has always been the same; my layouts, their equipment, scenery, and structures. On this page you will also find some photos of our animals.

If you have a comment or a question, feel free to .

I modeled in N-scale (1:160) from 1975 to 2008. During the summer of 2008 I decided to switch scales from "N" to "S" (1:64). The primary reason being that I'm getting older and the smaller scale became harder to see. My wife, Ria, is also involved in the hobby, when time permits. She has built, painted, weathered, and sold N-scale and HO-scale buildings. She is now involved in building S-scale structures, and she eventually wants to build a large G-scale railroad in the backyard.

I was born and raised in The Netherlands. I moved to the U.S. in 1980, and eventually became a naturalized U.S. citizen. My inspiration for model railroading started with my parents occasionally taken my brother and I to Madurodam in The Hague, The Netherlands. This area is a 1:25 scale model of most major features of Holland. The trains move, the boats float, the little people walk on sidewalks, lots of buildings, sound, and animation. As a visitor to this area, you walk on paths that meander right through this little world. As a little boy (a picture of me - yeah, you can't get more typically Dutch than that!), this was a dream world!

In my early teens I was given an N-scale Fleischmann train set. My bedroom in Holland wasn't that big, so a 2' x 4' layout was built that never really got much further than the track-laying stage. Nonetheless, the layout provided hours of fun and imagineering. I scratchbuilt some buildings from left-over wood and had a couple of small kits.

When we moved to Houston, Texas in 1980, my Dad, brother, and myself went to see an HO-scale layout somewhere in town. If I remember correctly, one of my Dad's co-workers was a member of this club and invited us. I seem to remember they had a floor in an office building. The layout was behind glass, and you would duck under the various areas. It was an amazing little world. Again, another one of those moments that led me on the path back into the hobby. I took some time off during my latter years in High School, followed by College, marriage, and the start of my software development career. Then in August of 1999 I came back to N-scale in full force. I built several layouts and had a lot of fun. Nine years later I felt that it was time for a change and I switched to S-scale. I realized I loved to build things from scratch, so my focus has become more on building and enjoying the process, rather than quickly erecting a finished layout. This is all much more easily done in the larger scale.

In addition to model railroading, I can be found riding my road-racing bike on the streets of Houston (yeah, I like to live dangerously!). My other hobby is woodworking. I enjoy building cabinets of all types and sizes. This is a very useful skill for building benchwork for layouts.

My full-time business is Fourth Ray Software, which I run from our home. It is a very enjoyable activity, to have the creative freedom to produce high-quality software products that people enjoy using. We invite you to visit our business web site, after all, that is how we can afford to continue this hobby of model railroading, and to bring you this web site!

I hope you are enjoying your visit to this web site. Come back often because I am always adding new content.     - Peter