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User:Vaoverland

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Vaoverland (talk | contribs) at 05:33, 3 January 2005 (→Commuter Lines, Misc Railroads). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
This barnstar is awarded in recognition of your outstanding contributions to William N. Page and its related rail company and biography articles. - Niteowlneils
a photo of me at work before I retired

Who am I

My name is Mark Fisher, and I live in Richmond, VA. My user name is VAOVERLAND, and my e-mail address is [email protected]. I am 53 years old. I have always loved and been fascinated by trains, streetcars, trolley-buses, all types of buses, and automobiles (in that order). I recently retired from over 30 years in the bus transportation business here in Virginia. I am a caregiver for an elderly parent and another family member with a disability. I have adult attention deficit disorder. I am also a night owl.

Childhood, Education

I lived in Downer's Grove, IL when small, and have visited family in the Chicago, IL area often since. We lived on the Burlington Railroad's famous 3-track main line into Chicago from Aurora. I can vividly remember the last of steam and Zephyr streamlined passenger trains, as well as the double-decked commuter trains.

We moved to Richmond, Virginia in 1958. My next door neighbor's dad was with Seaboard Air Line Railroad (SAL), and he took us to the roundhouse, where we saw a turntable, and many things of the railroad. The SAL's arch-rival was the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad (ACL) (a.k.a. Coast Line) and when they merged in 1967 to form the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad (SCL), their family moved to Jacksonville, Florida, where CSX Transportation has its' headquarters today. As I was growing up, another CSX predecessor, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) operated its' eastbound coal trains along the former James River and Kanawha Canal across the James River from my home. On the south side of the river, a Norfolk Southern predecessor, the Southern Railway (SOU) was operating the former Richmond and Danville Railroad (R&D) through the former Victorian era resort town of Bon Air near my home. My friends and I often hiked along these many tracks. At night, the sounds of the trains of the various railroads reminded me of the Burlington's Zephyrs running into Chicago.

In 1969, I graduated from Huguenot High School in Chesterfield County, Virginia and attended some community college classes locally.

Part-time Jobs

I have had many interesting various part-time jobs, both when in school, and at times during my career with buses. I transported rental cars (which tend to end up with too many in some cities and have to go back to other places), delivered newspapers (both on a bicycle and on a long motor route), worked at a small FM radio station, drove a wrecker, delivered for a drug store, drove para-transit (wheelchairs), and I drove EMS (emergency ambulances) mostly at night for several years. In those jobs, each was a combination of fun and learning.

A book that has impacted my whole life

When I was a teenager, I first read The Virginian Railway, written by rail historian and photographer H. Reid, a Norfolk native. He combined the usual information about locomotives and rolling stock customarily found in railroad books with the business strategy of the two founders of the VGN, who were each fascinating men with seemingly endless ideas and energy. These days they may have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder!

Reid's storytelling writing style included many stories told by former railroaders, who came to be very loyal to the VGN, which paid its employees and vendors a little better than absolutely necessary. The building of the railroad was a story of little business winning over big business. It was built to the highest possible engineering standards, was enormously profitable, and operated an amazingly wide range of innovative equipment.

The Virginian Railway enthralled me and has impacted my life, career, and hobby interests greatly in the 40 years since I first read it. I have 3 copies of H. Reid's epoch book, including a rare first edition, which has the best quality photographs. I still enjoy re-reading it (as do many other Virginian Railway enthusiasts I have been told).

Our family business and my career

In our family's business, which was my career for about 30 years, I now realize that my parents and I attempted to duplicate many of the values and features of the Virginian Railway, and we had a very loyal following of bus enthusiasts as employees who were attracted to our wide range of equipment types and operations.

Our company, Virginia Overland Transportation, served as a franchised bus dealer in Virginia for new buses and products of Wayne Corporation, Superior Coach Company, Amtran, Ward Body Company, Champion Home Builders, Braun Corporation, and Ricon.

Our company also operated 3 small urban-suburban bus companies, providing common carrier bus services such as local commuter service, public and private school bus transportation contract service, paratransit (wheelchair service), welfare-to-work vans, and motorcoach charters.

We were also innovative, and in the past few years, were the only private operator in Virginia to operate articulated coaches on a heavy University service.

Ultimately, after surviving many crisis, including the failure of Wayne Corporation (our principal bus dealership), and lost contracts, and downsizing substantially in the 1990s, our business was forced to close in June, 2004 when we lost our 2 biggest contracts at the same time.

On reflection, we transported millions of rides without ever having a fatality or major catastrophic accident. I believe good safety record is a more important a measure of success as longevity. And, while we never got rich (like the owners of the Virginian Railway), and we worked very hard over the years, we also managed to have a lot of fun too.

Disability: Adult Attention Deficit Disorder

I have a minor (?) mental disability: adult attention deficit disorder (ADD aka ADHD), which not diagnosed until I was 42 years old. I have been told that I have several specific manifestations of this.

I have what they call "hyper focus", which can be a good thing, as you can get intensely into whatever you are paying attention to. Of course, that could be a bad thing if the house is on fire and you fail to be aware of it.

On the downside, I have an auditory processing deficit. This is basically a delay in interpreting what you hear. My hearing is fine, but what I hear is often garbled initially. In conversation, about the same time I say "huh?", I figure out what is was that I just heard. Like the three-legged dog, I am told that my visual skills in compensation are much stronger than normal. Bottom line: I do better with what I see than what I hear.

Another manifestation has been more frustrating and difficult to overcome. This was diagnosed by the medical experts as a motor coordination deficit. When typing, it results in transposing letters. To explain briefly, with a career in bus transportation, I know how to spell "fleet". (duh?). When I type, I can mentally envision F-L-E-E-T, but it will come out as FLETE or something like that. This occurs every thrid to fuifth word on average, like this sentanec e I am typing right now, whcih i will refrain from cleaning up (sorry).

When I manually print, the problem doesn't happen, and for years, at mt job, I had help to do my typing (in the days before computers). I actually spell pretty well, but have to go back over every single word I ever type, even e-mail. Spell checkers on a computer were a godsend for me, and help enormously, although they don't catch it when I make another word by accident or when what I come out with is beyond the suggestions.

Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated. I have tried working off-line in my word processor, but I am trained and used to an outdated one (Lotus Wordpro a.k.a. AmiPro) and it doesn't do very well with Wikipedia formatting. I someday will need to earn MS word like the rest of the world, and have been doing that some. Copying previous text and editing it also is a workaround for me. I tried voice recognition stuff 8-10 years ago before I retired, but the results were poor. Expensive software or equipment is out of the question these days, as I am one of those seniors on a very fixed income. A question I have is whether there is any type of spell checker available when we are writing on Wikipedia pages.

I would like to spend more time on composing content and less on cleaning up my bad typing which results. I would appreciate some suggestions, as I am enjoying contributing to Wikipedia!

UPDATE: On suggestion of another Wikipedia contributor, I have downloaded and started using a free program ieSpell. It is especially helpful with my Adult ADD disability. It works very well, and is greatly reducing the time I spend going back and fixing my transposition errors. I would say it catches about 90&% of the, and offers a good alternative about 75% of the time after that. Thats better than any other spell checker I have used (and there have been a "few". <gr> It works with a simple right mouse click on any input box you have open. I highly recommend the ieSpell program. 07:45, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I also want to say that anyone who thinks they have ADD or ADHD or whatever should read the book "Driven To Distraction: Recognizing and Coping With Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood" by Edward M. Hallowell, M.D, John J. Ratey, M.D. [1] I would compare reading this book at age 42 to having a car and finding the owners manual in the glove box after you turn the first 100,000 miles!!! Vaoverland 12:26, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hobbies and Interests

I am active in some rail and bus preservation and Internet forum activities, and have been gathering research information to possibly write several books someday (?!). I participate in about 100 Yahoo groups, mostly focused on rail, bus, and local and state history special interests.

I have also have founded and moderate Yahoo groups, 3 for rail enthusiasts and 1 for bus enthusiasts. 2 of my rail groups are very active, and some of the information I have used on Wikipedia has come from others in our groups with hands-on historical backgrounds.

Some of our efforts has been used in the Virginia Standards of Learning on-line stuff for public school here! The Virginian Railway Enthusiasts Group is the most active for anyone who may be interested in what we are doing. This particular group has over 400 members and includes authors and historians, and is in top 10% of Yahoo Rail Enthusiasts groups.

The price of Yahoo groups is good (free). There is minimal advertising and no pop-ups.

I also enjoy searching the Internet, which is sort of a hobby, and works well with research for Wikipedia articles.

About Writing for Wikipedia

While I do some original writing from my personal knowledge and recollection, most of what I write for Wikipedia is compiled from multiple sources, including other Wikipedia articles, books, magazines and periodicals, special collections, information including some special collections held by organizations such as Virginia Historical Society, Library of Virginia, West Virginia Historical Society, Virginia Tech, University of Virginia, and many others. I also do a lot of web searches looking for specific information. Depending upon my perception of the veracity of the information source, I try to verify something from more than a single source before including it in an article. I also look further when I find conflicting information, which usually amounts to misspelling or incorrect dates, particularly on older subjects and sources. I am grateful for the access I have to the writing of others.

I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

Multi-licensed with the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License versions 1.0 and 2.0
I agree to multi-license my text contributions, unless otherwise stated, under Wikipedia's copyright terms and the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license version 1.0 and version 2.0. Please be aware that other contributors might not do the same, so if you want to use my contributions under the Creative Commons terms, please check the CC dual-license and Multi-licensing guides.

Vaoverland 21:48, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

My Contributions

For my Wikipedia contributions, I am mostly focused on history and people, places and buses, streetcars and railroads, generally topics with an orientation fairly close to Richmond and Virginia.

I know that Wikipedia articles are used by teachers as a basis for school projects. When composing, I visualize school children of middle school or high school age, and I try to keep it factual and interesting to read.

It is an exciting and true story, and I would like the reader to be able to relate to some of the emotions the people involved experienced, if that is appropriate in the encyclopedia setting. However, I may have tend to overload articles with adjectives in my enthusiasm. I may need help or suggestions in that area if y'all think it is biased.

I also am more focused on content than format. One area of weakness in my contributions of which I have been made aware is that I am more likely to include an internal link thank to place one correctly. I also know very little about categories, etc. I'm open to help or suggestions to make it a better article for Wikipedia. That is more important to me than the need to change anything from the way I have done it. In other words, please HELP if you can make it better, or guide me in doing so.

I am still learning how to write for Wikipedia, and appreciate suggestions and/or edits by others.

Some of the information used in some articles has been reviewed for accuracy and improvements by members of Virginian Railway Enthusiasts Group on Yahoo. There are more than a few published authors who are active in the group. When I have questions, or want to verify something, I get a lot of help on content, and I have been able to share some information provided by other Wikipedia contributors back with the Yahoo group.

My disclaimer: The listing of an article in this section does not necessarily mean that I wrote the article, or even any major part of it. It just means I have probably contributed to it, have been involved in it in some way, or I am planing to do so in the near future.

Wikipedia:Featured articles highlights Wikipedia articles judged to be particularly well-written and complete. They exemplify Wikipedia's very best work and represent what Wikipedia offers that is unique on the Internet. Before making the grade, a nominated article is subjected to a review and usually some enhancements and improvements from more than one writer. There are hundreds of thousands of articles on Wikipedia. Only about 1 in 900 achieves featured article status.

I was the principal writer (but not the only contributor) for two featured articles. They are:

  • William N. Page became a Wikipedia featured article in October, 2004. I have been working on research on Col. Page for several years. This remarkable man was co founder of the Deepwater Railway and Tidewater Railway, which were combined to form the Virginian Railway. While Page's partner, millionaire industrialist Henry Huttleston Rogers, has received most of the published attention for building the VGN over the years, and it was he who put up the money and obviously helped determine a winning strategy, I believe that other VGN Enthusiasts and I have come to realize that Page's role was a crucial portion of their partnership. As a featured article candidate, the William N. Page article had lots of help from other WP contributors, including one who went to a local library and got some great information to fill in some gaps, which also led me to new sources, It has been an exceptional pleasure to add this man's story (and that of the building of the Deepwater Railway, Tidewater Railway, and of course, the Virginian Railway) to Wikipedia.

The Wikipedia featured article process is helping me improve my research and writing skills, as well as contributing to articles which we hope others will enjoy and learn from.

WikiProjects

I participate in:


Railroads

Streetcars

Buses

Highways, Bridges, Tunnels, and Roads Features

Famous (and not-so-famous) People

History, Local Features

I am a contributor and am interested in the following articles, but in most cases, others have contributed more.

History

Local features, government, and communities


Wikipedia Articles Vaoverland To/Do List

I am working on a major expansion of the article on Henry H. Rogers. Much was been written on this fascinating man, who was the Virginian Railway's co founder and financier. The current WP article, mostly written by me, is very insufficient in my opinion. This fellow was very complex, and doing the re-write to a high standard is taking some time/ Anyone who can help, please refer to Talk:Henry H. Rogers/Draft for this work-in-progress.

Listing of other WP articles which I am researching, working on, and/or intend to work on.

Famous (and not-so-famous) People

Railroad towns and cities

Predecessors to current US railroads

Commuter Lines, Misc Railroads
CSX predecessors

NOTE: The following are CSX predecessors.

NS predecessors

NOTE: The following are NS predecessors.

Miscellaneous to/do articles

updated Vaoverland 06:30, Dec 26, 2004 (UTC)

Summary

I am enjoying the Wikipedia writing, and welcome suggestions.

Thanks to all,
Yours in Richmond, VA
Mark Fisher, aka vaoverland
[email protected]

last updated Vaoverland 20:00, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)

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