Mark Hemphill turned down a Chief Dispatcher's job at the Kansas City Southern Railway to become Editor of Trains Magazine in September 2000. A native of Colorado, his interest in railroads dates to age 5, when he began accompanying his father on business trips into the Colorado mountains—this in the pre-tourist age when the Rio Grande operated a steam railroad just as it had in 1930, and coal smoke wafted from the depot chimney at Leadville.

Mark's career has taken him throughout Alaska managing heavy construction; to California and back to Colorado repairing locomotives; to Urbana, Illinois, to teach writing at the University of Illinois; to Idaho to write science and engineering reports for the U.S. Department of Energy; and to Louisiana as a train dispatcher. In the meantime he earned an M.A. in History from the University of Illinois, and attended medical school for two years.

Mark and his wife, Christina (also a former KCS train dispatcher), live in Waukesha, Wis.