Ray Tutaj

Ray Tutaj Jr (b.1963) is from Illinois. He is a musician, and author of the popular Guitar Journey method, and How to Fingerpick Guitar. For over 30 years he has taught guitar, performed, and written music. He studied music at UNLV in Las Vegas NV, has recorded albums, been on radio, TV, created documentaries and composed music for documentaries. He has performed with great musicians; including Muriel Anderson. His You Tube channel, (raytutajjr) has over 200 videos, over a million views; and thousands of subscribers!

Some of his other passions include photography, painting, and history. He also loves trains and railroad photography, as evident with several books available. Over the years he has created e-books with railroad pictures.

His interest in railroad photography started around 1990 when he met some rail fans at work. Those rail fans were Harv and Lynne Kahn, and they were a big influence on Ray and they had rekindled the latent desire for trains again. Harv and Lynne photographed the Union Pacific Railroad in the Las Vegas area, and soon got Ray involved. This renewed interest in trains eventually led to his fascination with Illinois Railroad history. This ultimately led to building two HO scale model layouts which are on permanent display in Mendota and Cherry IL These layouts are very successful and many thousands have seen Ray's handiwork. He also has an e-book available of his model railroading images and he tells the whole story in detail of how all of this model building came about. It is quite interesting. In addition he compiled an e-book of his late friend Harv Kahn's railroad photography which specializes in the late 1970's, 80's and 90's.