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Name:
Chris Masi

LEGO trains have been part of Chris Masi’s life for over 20 years now-ever since he saw a 7720 train set in a toy store when he was 16 and got his parents to buy it for him.

He hasn’t looked back since, even taking his LEGO trains to college with him. "At first, I was worried my friends would think I was weird," he says. But the opposite happened-everyone was fascinated by them.

Now, as a professor of chemistry, he says he spends far too much money on LEGO bricks. His LEGO collection is in his basement at home, next to his pantry. "I go down for a can of soup-and forget the soup," he jokes. "I get distracted by my LEGO trains every time".

Chris is an active member of NELUG – the New England LEGO Users Group – and was part of the Amoskeag Millyard Project . He built most of the LEGO trains for this amazing project in the SEE Science Center in Manchester, New Hampshire.

The Millyard took almost three years to design and build. "After that, what do you do next?" Chris asks. The answer is LEGO Hobby Trains, as Chris was asked to contribute some models to serve as inspiration for other LEGO fans. Chris’ favorite design is a caboose, and he also worked on a diesel electric engine inspired by European engines and a street car.

For Chris, one of the challenges with designing a train for the LEGO Factory Hobby Train Box was the limited selection of LEGO bricks. When he opened the initial shipment of bricks he received, he could see that they just weren’t the right bricks to build the design he wanted, so he worked with the Hobby Train Box group to choose the best bricks they could. After all, "I wanted to build the best train I could!"