4th Street at the Tracks • Greenport, NY 11944 • 631-477-0439
Griffing Avenue at the Tracks • Riverhead, NY 11901 • 631-727-7920
Preserving Long Island's Rich Railroading Heritage
RMLI 2010 Educational Forum
For our fourth annual Educational Forum, Sam Berliner, III will give a profusely illustrated presentation on the Long Island Rail Road's first diesel locomotives, focusing on the first #401 of 1925, the world's first road switcher, as well as on the first and second #402 and Mike and Ike, the #403A and B. He will also give an overview of all the earliest diesels (oil-electrics) and their progeny.
Sam is a native Manhattanite but spent half of his early summers on Long Island and has been a permanent resident of Nassau County since 1945. He was Manager of Support Services for Pall Corporation in Glen Cove for 15 years and then Director of Technical Services for Heat Systems-Ultrasonics (now Misonix) in Plainview-Farmingdale for 17 years before becoming an independent consultant in ultrasonic processing in 1990.
Sam has been interested in heavy equipment and especially railroads since early childhood and his club-sized HO empire has at its core the quadrants of his original 1960 4' x 6' layout. In 1980, he also started a Z-scale (1:220) layout which jams all the features of the HO setup in 3½' x 5', including a turntable and roundhouse and a transfer table. In both scales, he favors gigantic heavy-duty equipment, up to the 800-ton 38-axle CEBX 800 Schnabel car. He is a member of the STD-NER-NRMA and the PRRT&HS, and of LIST-NRHS (of which he was a director).
On 30 May 1996, Sam started a web site which has since grown to over 500 pages, primarily on railroads, old autos, the 1908-38 Long Island Motor Parkway, and ultrasonics. He also has a major focus on apocryphal locos (and he uses that last word advisedly).
Sam has two grown daughters and two grandchildren. He is engaged to the Rev. Lilia Cuervo (who loves big steam locomotives!) and they live in Westbury.
Mark your calendars now for Saturday, March 20th and plan to attend this fascinating retrospective of emerging railroad technology on the LIRR. Admission is FREE and open to all. Ample municipal parking is available in the courthouse parking area, Osborne and Court Streets - behind the Suffolk County Historical Society building. ~ Snow date: Saturday, March 27, 2010 at 1:30 PM
Visit RMLI on the web at www.rmli.us If you have questions or need directions, please e-mail Don Fisher at dfisher@rmli.us We hope to see you on March 20th at 1:30 P.M.!
