Share a piece of our consultants' lives by discovering their passions! This month, let's discover the passion of Laurent ROEKENS for model railroading.

What is your passion? 

My passion is model railroading (or railway modelling).

I particularly appreciate model trains in HO scale (1/87) and the IV and V eras (late 70's to 2000's), from the end of steam to the TGV era (France's intercity high-speed rail service). It is a period very rich in variety of train compositions with French and European material.

I am mainly inclined to the big daytime express trains (MISTRL, CISALPIN, MOLIERE, PARSIFAL, ETOILE DU NORD), and the night trains (RIALTO, TRAIN BLEU, Trains Auto-Couchette (TAC) of my childhood...).

My current project (even if I'm on break now), is the construction of a network.

When did you start?

Since "forever"! I inherited this passion that I also passed on to my children. I have pictures of myself at 3 years old in ecstasy with my mother in front of a steam locomotive!

In 2021, I created with other people the company ULTIMATE MODELS which exploits my work of dedicated electronics since several years.

Self-taught in electronics, I am now  learning about embedded electronics and am interested in "real time", IOT, ARDUINO (brand of an open-source prototyping platform that allows users to create interactive electronic objects from electronic boards), ...

What do you like in this activity? 

What I like about model railroading is the technical, human, historical and heritage richness. It is a parenthesis in time, a door of escape towards another universe which is the extension of myself.

And in your daily life, how does your passion fit in?

My free time is mainly devoted to it and I have a dedicated room in my house. I write articles for magazines and I also participate in various specialized forums as well as in exhibitions alone or in clubs in France and abroad.

Have you acquired skills that you use in your professional life?

Yes, several and vice versa. I acquired skills in:

• The design to the realization, and the marketing (prototyping/POC),
• The Development, validation, testing,
• The learning of coding in C/C++ mainly,
• Project management in the broadest sense and interaction with developers but also all actors or stakeholders (customers, manufacturers, suppliers, collaborators, ...),
• By extension in the implementation of industrialized processes.

And I understood the joys/challenges of being an entrepreneur!

Thank you Laurent for answering our questions!