IAN KELLY | Malibu, CA

A retired video engineer and owner of a video services company, Ian, originally from England, has lived in the USA for 30+ years on California’s sunny west coast. His connection to the railroad goes back some 30 years when introduced to the Cumbres and Toltec narrow-gauge while working on “Indiana and the Last Crusade”. He so enjoyed his time on the railroad that he always promised himself that he would return. Some 25 years later, he joined the FRIENDS and worked in the Antonito CRF on the passenger truck project with Russ Hanscom during the 2013 session G. Fast forward to 2018 when Ian worked all 7 sessions at the CRF, as well as appearing as Chief Inspector T.N. Crumpette as part of the railroad’s Murder/Mystery train back in September – great fun and a big success for the railroad. In addition, in 2018, he also worked as a volunteer train host on two of the Friends charter freights. In his early years, Ian was a trainee mechanical engineer with British Railways Workshops in England, spending time in the works at Doncaster going through the apprentice school, then York carriage works, Horwich rolling stock and foundry works, followed by the drawing offices in Derby. After moving on to a job at Pinewood Studios, he got involved in making documentaries and from there worked on various feature film projects in the UK, the USA and around the world, including “Forrest Gump”, “Avatar” and “Jungle Book” as well as the aforementioned “Indy 3”. But the minute the hooter goes off in the CRF for lunch, mentally he’s back in Doncaster Locomotive Works. For the future, he would like to see younger volunteers joining the friends and getting involved. Plus he’s a big fan of the idea of recording skills and methods on video for the use of future volunteers. In lots of organizations, much time is spent relearning skills and knowledge that someone else has forgotten. He believes we should be passing on the things we have learned to those who will follow in our footsteps.