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This is the hobby web site of Peter Vanvliet. I model in N-scale, and my wife Ria prefers HO-scale. She also has dreams of building a large G-scale layout in our backyard. The layouts shown in this web site were all built by Peter.

My inspiration for model railroading started with occasional visits to Madurodam in The Hague, The Netherlands as I grew up in Holland. 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!

Growing up in my early teens I was given a Fleischmann train set. This was in N-scale. 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 leads to this eventual involvement in the hobby.

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.

We share the house with our four animals: two cats, a Pug, and a Senegal (small, but very loud, parrot).

My full-time business is Fourth Ray Software, which I run from my home office. 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! :-)

We hope you are enjoying your visit to our web site. Come back often because we are always adding new content.
    - Peter