In Snyder's Corners, a small dot on the western rim of New York's Catskill Mountains, life is tough. Jobs are scarce, money is tight, and the best part of education is the state-ranked basketball team.

Jimmy Kalid, a ninth-grade English teacher at Kaaterskill Central School in the area's centralized district, realizes something's amiss. Despite impressive test scores, his students can barely read. Then his new girlfriend, Phyllis Nielsen, while substituting for the eighth-grade English teacher, makes a discovery that causes everything to make sense.

When Joseph Scalani, the nephew of a mob boss-and paper pusher in the State Department of Education-comes to town with evidence of test tampering, he's hoping to shake down the perpetrators. Instead he meets a pair of incompetents: the bumbling Chief School Officer and his lackey. These two must scramble to cover their tracks, confounding a county sheriff, who rarely sees anything beyond petty theft.

As the mob, the school's leadership, and the sheriff collide, each player rises to his true level of incompetence. Their only hope to unravel the mystery is the town's singular pair of intelligent teachers - Jimmy Kalid and Phyllis Nielsen.

As the twentieth century turned to the twenty-first, there was a civil war raging in the toy train hobby between those who ran and/or collected O-gauge toy trains. The icon of the hobby, Lionel LLC, was being challenged by an upstart company, Mike's Train House (MTH), for the minds, hearts and pocketbooks of those in the hobby or just beginning in it. This was a war being fought by more disinformation, innuendo, or out-right lies than either of the 2000 or 2004 political campaigns. The skirmishes and battles of this war would be fought out in some of the darnedest places and in the strangest of ways.

The people of Palatine County and Snyder's Corners are back, this time it is those on the other side of the tracks. When Bill and Amy Weaver inherit a rare, one-of-a-kind toy train locomotive they are targeted by two of Snyder's Corners' wealthy collectors who will do anything, legal or otherwise, to obtain this valuable addition to their collection. If they can't buy it then maybe they will have to kill for it.

Railroad (Double) Crossing is an inside look at the toy train hobby and the collectors who make up a large group of those involved in it. If you thought toy trains were just kid's toys, think again.

In Snyder's Corners, a small dot on the western rim of New York's Catskill Mountains, life is tough. Jobs are scarce, money is tight, and the best part of education is the state-ranked basketball team.

Jimmy Kalid, a ninth-grade English teacher at Kaaterskill Central School in the area's centralized district, realizes something's amiss. Despite impressive test scores, his students can barely read. Then his new girlfriend, Phyllis Nielsen, while substituting for the eighth-grade English teacher, makes a discovery that causes everything to make sense.

When Joseph Scalani, the nephew of a mob boss-and paper pusher in the State Department of Education-comes to town with evidence of test tampering, he's hoping to shake down the perpetrators. Instead he meets a pair of incompetents: the bumbling Chief School Officer and his lackey. These two must scramble to cover their tracks, confounding a county sheriff, who rarely sees anything beyond petty theft.

As the mob, the school's leadership, and the sheriff collide, each player rises to his true level of incompetence. Their only hope to unravel the mystery is the town's singular pair of intelligent teachers - Jimmy Kalid and Phyllis Nielsen.

As the twentieth century turned to the twenty-first, there was a civil war raging in the toy train hobby between those who ran and/or collected O-gauge toy trains. The icon of the hobby, Lionel LLC, was being challenged by an upstart company, Mike's Train House (MTH), for the minds, hearts and pocketbooks of those in the hobby or just beginning in it. This was a war being fought by more disinformation, innuendo, or out-right lies than either of the 2000 or 2004 political campaigns. The skirmishes and battles of this war would be fought out in some of the darnedest places and in the strangest of ways.

The people of Palatine County and Snyder's Corners are back, this time it is those on the other side of the tracks. When Bill and Amy Weaver inherit a rare, one-of-a-kind toy train locomotive they are targeted by two of Snyder's Corners' wealthy collectors who will do anything, legal or otherwise, to obtain this valuable addition to their collection. If they can't buy it then maybe they will have to kill for it.

Railroad (Double) Crossing is an inside look at the toy train hobby and the collectors who make up a large group of those involved in it. If you thought toy trains were just kid's toys, think again.

Catharine Snyder was a 10-year old in 1919 when a family friend gave her her first diary. In it she recorded a year of growing up under Overlook Mountain in Ulster County NY at a time when her life would be changed forever by her father's mental breakdown. Her son, Jim, has transcibed this diary and added family information and notes to it to help the reader understand her life and family.