BMR Team

“Set Up Running” Meet the team behind Brick Model Railroader

Cale Leiphart – BMR Creator, Model Team

Photo by Anthony Sava
Cale, delirious from all the train excitement at Brickworld, jumps from one of the PennLUG bridges, landing un climactically 2 feet bellow. Photo by Anthony Sava

Cale Leiphart received his first LEGO® train set, 7722 Steam Cargo Train, one Christmas at the age of 8. And thus began his slow downward spiral into the dark world of LEGO@ trains. Interrupted by a brief period in the early 2000s that he calls “My castle phase”, Cale turned his complete energy back to trains in 2006 when his newly formed club, PennLUG, participated in the NMRA National Train Show that year in Philadelphia.

Cale has become an accomplished builder in the LEGO® train community, winning many awards and giving presentations at fan conventions, writing articles on trains for various LEGO® fan magazines, and leading PennLUG in developing one of the premier club train layouts in North America. His favorite subject to model is steam era railroads from his home state of Pennsylvania.

Cale is a true rail fan who loves railroad history. When not building LEGO® models he can be found collecting books on railroads, visiting train museums, researching railroad history, and riding trains. We’re pretty sure its a sickness.

You can find Cale’s LEGO® models on his Flickr Gallery

Glenn Holland – Former Team Member

After yet another need for a rebuild (likely a drop from the table or just plain bad design,) Glenn reassembles his Cotton Belt Route atlantic type locomotive at Brickfair Virginia 2016. Photo by Cale Leiphart

Glenn has been a life-long fan of both trains and LEGO. His first set was the 4561 Railway Express, which he received for Christmas in the early 2000’s. He has been collecting sets and building MOCs ever since. Glenn started his current layout in 2006 when he bought the 7897-1 Passenger Train, and it has progressed into an entire corner of his basement. He plans to build a new layout from scratch sometime in the future.

In 2014, Glenn joined PennLUG’s train layout at Philly Brickfest where he unveiled his Pennsylvania Railroad Streamlined K4s locomotive. He has since been working alongside the rest of the PennLUG train builders in working on the layout, and was a part of the small team which completed PennLUG’s famous roundhouse in Spring of 2015. Since then Glenn has been working to expand his train fleet.

Glenn has a Flickr page and a Youtube channel, where he often uploads videos pertaining to LEGO trains.

Glenn formally left the BMR team in October 2021 to pursue other projects and grow the hobby in other ways, but remains excited for BMR’s future.

Elroy Davis – BMR Contributor, LAN Ambassador

Elroy Davis
Elroy and youngest daughter Caliana discussing their next train layout.

Elroy first became interested in trains as a young child, drooling over his older brother’s HO layout.  That interest lay dormant until around the turn of the century when he visited a train show featuring a layout of the New England LEGO User’s Group (NELUG).  Soon after the show he joined NELUG and, not much longer after that, found two copies of 4535 – LEGO Express Deluxe at a local toy store, kicking off his journey into the world of brick-built trains.

These days Elroy collects and models in multiple scales, including N, S, L, and 1/8 scale Live Steam, focusing much of his research and time on the former Rutland Railroad of Vermont.  When not working with trains, Elroy spends his time raising four of his five daughters (one has gone off to college), building non-train projects, and taking part in historical reenactments of the American Revolution.

Jim Catagnus Jr – BMR Web Master

Jim first became interested in trains and model railroading from his Dad Jim Sr at a very young age. They took many trips to Lancaster and the Strasburg Railroad, and other steam railroads in PA, NJ, and Maryland. Jim Jr was also introduced to LEGO at an early age, but it wasn’t until much later that he go into LEGO train building.

Today Jim enjoys working with technology and  LEGO. He spends time with his wife and two children, working on various LEGO sites, and building with his family.

Gerbrand “raised” – BMR Contributor

Raised (left) and Cale hanging out at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania.
raised (Gerbrand for his friends) has been building Lego Trains since he had his first Paper Route when he was 14, and managed to buy over his first Lego Train (The Lego Freight Rail Runner 4565) from a classmate. He has managed to stay away from The Dark Ages ever since. His biggest dream ever was owning the Metroliner (4558) and the Cargo Express Train (4559), which wasn’t a Cargo Train at all. Both dreams he realized before the age of 30.
In the last 15 years raised has been part of LOWLUG, the Dutch Lego Users Group. With interuptions he has been part of several groups of Dutch Lego Train builders. He is currently part of the LOWLUG Modular Train Club (LLMTC), the 8-wide and 1:45 Scale Railroaders Lego Train Club. Next to that, he is a regular contributor at BMR, starting to write only several weeks after Cale and Glenn launched BMR.
raised is a huge Trainhead and a big fan of everything that runs on tracks. His major interests are Contemporary European Rolling Stock (with a focus on The Netherlands) and USAsian Electrics, ranging back all the way tot he 1920ies, when Electrics were still considered all the rave in the US.
When raised is not building Legos, you might find him travelling abroad, drawing comics, reading books, working, or doing regular “life-stuff” with his wife and soon-to-be-born daughter.
Enrico Lussi – BMR Contributor
Enrico fixing (or breaking) Raised’s yellow NS 1600 at Lego World 2019.

Enrico and his family are originally from Italy, but he was born and raised in the Netherlands. Enrico got his first LEGO set, 7898, when we has 8 years old. Since then his LEGO train set collection started growing until he discovered that he could make MOCs of trains.  The general theme of his builds is Germany around the 1960’s but there are some Dutch builds in there to. He loves to visit historical railway museums and travel by steam train.

He currently works for a telecom company in the Netherlands and is studying to become a Civil Engineer, and aims to build railways after obtaining his degree. 

Enrico joined the BMR team in August 2019. If you want to see more of his work you can fallow him on:

Matt Csenge – BMR Contributor, Model Team

Matt standing between Frisco no. 1621, a 2-10-0, and Chicago, Burlington & Quincy no. 9908, Silver Charger in St. Louis, Missouri.

Matt has always had a love of both trains and Lego. He grew up with Lionel and HO trains, and remembers his mom taking him to the train station just to watch the commuter trains fly by. His first Lego train was the re-release of the Metroliner (10001) in 2001, which is still his favorite train set. Growing up outside New York City along the electrified mainlines of the New York Central and New Haven Railroads clearly influenced his choice of subject matter to model.

Outside of Lego (there isn’t much outside of trains for Matt) his passions include hiking, railroad photography, collecting railway tickets and maps, and travelling… to places where he can do the first three!

Matt’s Flickr

Chris Stone – BMR Contributor, Model Team

Chris Stone: winner of OcTRAINber and featured previously on BMR
Chris has always had a bit of a modeling streak with LEGO, starting with a water treatment plant at the young age of 4. Somehow, despite having loved Trains even longer than LEGO (And having had an HO Train set since he was 6), it took both the release of LEGO’s Emerald Night train set and a fateful encounter with a Mallet locomotive at a museum in Flagstaff, AZ to inspire him to kick into gear and start seriously modeling US locomotives.
After his first model of ATSF’s #2926 caught the attention of one of the people working to restore the real #2926 locomotive, Chris was invited to a local train show in 2014. After quickly assembling his first layout in less than a week, he has continued to work on expanding and improving his layout and train roster for display at several shows since. His favorite part of the shows, running trains aside, has always been the opportunities to teach and learn from train fans and modelers alike.

Aaron Burnett – BMR Contributor, Model Team

Aaron Burnett, who has been previously featured on BMR
Aaron Burnett realized his love for trains at a young age. For his fourth birthday, his grandfather handed down an HO-scale, American 4-4-0 steam locomotive and a small loop of track. For hours, on a near-daily basis, he would marvel at the small engine turning laps. He recalls his father taking him to a local train station outside of Atlanta to watch the Amtrak trains make stops and the freight trains blow through. In 1998, for his sixth birthday, he received his first LEGO® train set, and it didn’t take long for the satisfaction of building trains to transform into a beloved hobby.
Growing up, Aaron collected a number of the train sets released by The LEGO® Group, also building several custom trains, but he didn’t do much building from 2007-2017. “Nearly a decade of my life was consumed with baseball, kart/stock car racing and pursuing my career,” he said. Aaron currently works for a telecommunications infrastructure engineering firm, facilitating in the design of cellular networks, and after hanging up the baseball mitt and steering wheel, he turned back to LEGO®. Since rediscovering this passion of his, Aaron has designed and constructed several popular train models, and is excited to have earned the opportunity to contribute to Brick Model Railroader: “I’m honored to be a part of this group of reputable and talented modelers. They’re great people and they produce a great product.”