Hi folks! Welcome to the official website of La Rosa's Trains! My name is Brian La Rosa. I live in Damascus, Maryland with my father and my mother.
I was born in Vienna, Austria on August 13, 1996. However, my parents were born and raised in the United States. When they got married, they eventually moved to Europe for my dad's job as a research chemist at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). That's why I was born in Austria. My parents could still remind me of the time when I was riding in a stroller as a toddler and could see that a train was coming. Because German is Austria's official language, I shouted the word "train" in that language as it passed through the railroad crossing. I literally said "Zug!" (pronounced "tzoog"), which means "train" in German. I don't remember that story but it's true. In 1998, we moved to another home in Nice, France and lived there for two years. But in 2000, we moved to yet another home near Monaco. When I was old enough to attend school, I had to go to one that's located in Nice. So I used to commute regularly with my mom by train, which made it quite fun. In addition, I love watching Thomas the Tank Engine TV series and I still do today. As a result, I wanted to collect wooden trains based on Thomas and all his friends and I did. It's called the Thomas Wooden Railway. More information can be found on my Thomas Wooden Railway page.
When I turned 8 years old in the summer of 2004, my dad's contract with the IAEA had expired. Therefore, we moved from Europe to Rochester, New York where my dad originally grew up in, but he had a new job at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), located in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Because of his job and the search for our new home in Maryland, my dad couldn't live in Rochester with me and my family but visited very often. Later that same year, we found an interesting train video from a local library. It was an "I Love Toy Trains" VHS tape, distributed by TM Books & Video, and I now fell in love with the "I Love Toy Trains" series. This series is very educational to me and I learned quite a lot more about trains, especially those in North America as opposed to Europe. More information can be found on my TM Books & Video page.
We finally moved to Damascus in the summer of 2005. One thing I do like about that town is that there's been a special train show that occurs at the Damascus Public Library every November. It's called the Damascus Train Day. In November 2010, at the age of 14, I always enjoyed Train Day so much that I wanted an electric toy train for Christmas of that year. I chose O gauge as the best size for me because I wanted something that's not too big (e.g. Standard gauge tinplate, G gauge) but not too small (e.g. HO scale, N scale). At Christmas time of that same year, we went on vacation to Rochester to visit my dad's aunt. We used to visit her mostly for Christmas ever since I was little. On Christmas morning, I now received my very first O gauge train made by MTH Electric Trains. Two years later, I received my first Lionel train set for the holiday season. And today, I normally collect and run both Lionel and MTH O gauge trains. My layout is located in the basement of my house.
Enjoy my website!
