About Me

My name is Michael Lechicky. I'm silly, I'm curious, and I love the Catskill Mountains. I'm fascinated by them - their geology, their ecology, their cultural history and their imprint on American society. This fascination is deeply intertwined with an interest in their historic, long-gone railroads - lines of charm and enchantment that captivated me as a child and still do.

The Hillendale Railway has been many things over its lifespan but presently it's become a place where I bring to life the things I love about those Catskill railroads. From weird triangle-shaped crossing signs to bluestone mile markers, the Catskill lines have a lot to love and the Hillendale is the canvas on which I bring those details from hundred-year-old sepia photographs into tangible form.

In my home state I am a volunteer with the Phillipsburg Railroad Historians, Inc., where I am a student engineer on the Centerville & Southwestern Railroad, the world's only 9-7/16" gauge railroad and the third-oldest Grand Scale railroad in the country. When I'm not around railroads, I like to bird.