My first encounter with Jim Speaker was in 1979 at a hobby shop called Crains Trains and Hobbies in La Puente California. The guy seemed kinda strange back then. He had an obsession with short lines and would name off lines that none of us had ever heard of and would sometimes present drawings or color schemes,sometimes on paper plates or Dixie cups. There was a model railroad club there of which I was a member. Speaker would often inquire about joining the club to which hobby shop owner Bill Crain, who would refer to Speaker as "Lee Roy", would tell him there were no openings regardless of weather there were or not. A life long friend of mine went to West Covina H.S. at the same time as Speaker. This friend would tell me that when ever he checked out a railroad book from the school library, the words "The Healthy Mirror Route" would be written in pencil on some of the locomotive pictures. As he and Speaker were the only ones who check out R.R. books, as only his and Speakers names were on the card, he presumed it was Speaker. That's when I learned his name was not "Lee Roy". I had heard some tale of him having a briefcase that had colored lights on it and that said briefcase was hit by a train on the platform of the SP Pomona depot. Years later as I started seeing his name on pictures in calendars and magazines I thought, must be another Jim Speaker. Then I saw him at an OERM night shoot at the Perris depot and that confirmed to me it was the same guy. Whatever else you can say about the man or his methods, it must be admitted, he's a heck of a railroad photographer.