David likes to know how things work. It troubles him when he doesn’t. And so, when you have a problem because system A is no longer talking to system B, he is the guy you may wish to call.

With a background in computer science and an interest in model railways (and radio-controlled boats), David was a natural fit for the more technical aspects of the McKinley extension project once he’d met the team at the 2016 Poole club show. While his children ran the demo layout he quizzed the rest of the crew about the McKinley project, and was sufficiently interested to maintain the contact afterwards.

Now he’s up to his neck in developing the new iPad timetable operations system, reviewing requirements, analysing systems and fixing those pesky bugs.

David had no prior experience with the FileMaker software which is used in the timetabling system; this can be fairly complex, even for experienced users, but he quickly managed to home in on the core tables (individual databases) to find out how the system worked.

That chance meeting in 2016 was yet another example of the right person joining the McKinley team at the right time; how does this keep happening?