In a kitchen drawer in the Mayor of Hudson’s 6th Street home, lives not knives and forks, pots and pans, or a well-organized spice collection, but model trains — lots of them. Miniature boxcars, sleepers, and engines from Walthers Mainline, Atlas, Accurail, and Amtrak are stacked, all still in their packaging, destined to one day be part of an elaborate model train set. 

“The modeling thing is aspirational,” said mayor of Hudson Joe Ferris, who struggled to close the kitchen drawer, his collection of rolling stock jamming up the runners. “Modeling the scenery is a big hurdle, but the amount [of models] I have is an effort to make the jump and get started.”

Joe Ferris took office in January 2026 after narrowly defeating incumbent Kamal Johnson. But if you run into Ferris, you’re just as likely to end up in a conversation about vintage Amtrak cars as Hudson’s fiscal policy. Whether it manifests itself in modeling, train tourism, or train policy, the Mayor of Hudson is a bona fide train enthusiast. 

Clues to Ferris’ train hobby are not just tucked in drawers, but displayed on every available wall space, magazine rack, and mantelpiece in his home. In the living room, a trio of old advertising posters for New York Central Lines hang above the mantelpiece. By the stairs is framed Brooklyn Rapid Transit bond from the 1910s, next to a map of the New York City subway system from 1937. A New York Central train timetable from 1964 is around the corner, and on the coffee table, copies of Trains Magazine are hidden amongst stacks of The Economist. Perhaps the crown jewel is an outrageously heavy refurbished subway roller which once hung in a New York subway car in the 1960s, with hand cycled destination signs. 

Hudson is New York State’s third busiest Amtrak station, a fact Ferris enjoys surprising people with. And while Ferris’ mayoral duties mostly don’t overlap with his train expertise, there are times when the worlds of lobbyist and hobbyist collide.

Ferris has been working with the Empire State Passengers Association to see if Hudson can help in their goal of reducing commute times from New York to Albany to two hours. One idea is to reduce passenger exchange times at stations like Hudson’s, with its lack of level boarding. Ferris also keeps up with train news as it pertains to Hudson. For example, last year’s now-cancelled plan for Metro North to extend its service to Albany (and thereby Hudson) was a major development. In March, previously suspended Empire Service trains between New York and Albany were restored. “As a mayor of a city that relies so heavily on Amtrak service, you can’t take your eye off the issue,” said Ferris. If Hudson once staked its identity as a seafaring town — its softcore maritime feeling presenting itself in ship wheels, whales, and anchors ornamenting street signs, hotel lobbies, and brochures — It’s perhaps more accurate to call it a railroad town today.

Ferris grew up in Brooklyn until he was four, when his family moved to Burlington, Vermont. But the initial track of  Ferris’ interest in trains was laid before they left New York. His father was the catalyst, and would take him around the city via subway as he ran errands. Eventually, the duo would ride the subway simply for the fun of it. “We would just get on the subway and try to see how many transfers we could make, and just bop around,” said Ferris. Since then, childhood birthday parties were always at the Transit Museum, and a popular afterschool pastime was pouring over subway maps. 

Today, train tourism is a large part of his hobby. Ferris has traveled many of Amtrak’s major scenic routes like the two-day California Zephyr from Chicago to San Francisco, the Empire Builder from Chicago to Seattle, the Adirondack from New York to Montreal, and operated a quarter-million-pound diesel locomotive on the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad as part of their “Hands on the Throttle” experience. In December 2025 Ferris took the Eurostar from London to Paris and back, a blisteringly fast train that connects the UK to mainland Europe via an undersea tunnel. “I had never gone that fast on the ground before,” said Ferris. “It’s just like a reminder of what can be in terms of public transit.”

With such a deep-seated hobby, nurtured from his earliest days, you might think that Ferris has thought about turning his hobby into a career. Indeed, he got very close to doing just that. 

One day in 2007, Ferris was walking through Penn Station. He had recently graduated college, and spotted a notice that an Amtrak job fair was taking place. He showed up — resumé in hand — and gravitated toward the conductor’s table. After an informal interview, the Amtrak representative said that Ferris would hear back soon. Ferris handed over the resumé. He heard nothing for a few weeks, and was quickly casting off his train conductor aspirations as a pipe dream. “I put my resumé in as a lark,” he said.

A few weeks later, he received a letter forwarded to him by his mother — it was from Amtrak, inviting Ferris to the highly selective conductor’s test in Newark, New Jersey. However, on his resume, Ferris had used his old college address, not his new apartment that he had lined up in Jersey City. By the time his college forwarded the letter to Ferris’ parents, who then passed it on to him, the test day was two days gone. 

If things had gone differently, Joe Ferris could be at this moment hurtling through Arizona, conducting the Southwest Chief. He could be checking tickets at Grand Junction, Colorado, as passengers embark the California Zephyr. Hudson could’ve been just a passing station for him, one notch on a long workday. Instead, Hudson became his home station, and Ferris became a conductor of a different sort, responsible for keeping the city — from its cab to its caboose — on track. 

Mike Donovan was on all fours, examining a book called “Voices of Convergence,” by Daniel Leary. It was an old hardcover, its title printed in a playful 1960s psychedelia font. It was a rainy Monday morning, and he was on the living room floor of a perfect stranger. 

James Ryan had invited Donovan into his State Street home to help him shed some book weight, as he prepared to move across the river to Coxsackie. Donovan placed “Voices of Convergence,” on top of a slowly growing tower of books — this was the stack he was taking with him. 

Donovan loves old books so much he named a store after them. Old Books, at 610 Warren Street, opened in September 2024. About twice a month, Donovan will go out on book-hauls to people’s houses, libraries, storage units, and garage sales around Hudson, Columbia County, and beyond, purchasing dozens of boxes of books, soon to fill the gaps on the shelves at the store. 

The narrow Warren Street space is neatly organized, uncluttered, and airy. But achieving such a well-curated space comes with an element of chaos, as he visits individuals in a state of transition, whether from moving, downsizing, or stumped at what to do with books left behind from a loved one’s death. 

“You’re shepherding books through time,” said Donovan, examining “Coming of Age” by Studs Terkel, before placing it in the take pile, growing precariously tall in Ryan’s living room. “Books are passing through centuries, but people aren’t passing through centuries.” Many people come into the store to inquire about Donovan’s book-buying — older men and women are a common demographic. “A lot of times you’re dealing with a widow or widower,” said Donovan. “When they’re five paces in [the store], I know exactly what they’re going to say.” His close contact with those who are moving through the death of a loved one turns Donovan’s job into part book-buyer, part estate-manager, part death doula, with ample opportunity to reflect on the passage of time as he sifts through the literature accumulated over long lives. “People are born and people are dying, but the book is still going,” he said. 

“I love science fiction,” said Ryan, surrounded by hundreds of his books spread across the jute rug of his living room, a sort of self portrait in paperbacks. “Notice there’s no science fiction here, they’re all coming with me.” The books Ryan was getting rid of, which included authors such as Slavoj Zizek, Sartre, Andre Breton, Foucault, Eldridge Cleaver, CK Williams, and curious coffee table books such as “The Ancient Science of Geomancy,” and “Sundials: A History of Theory and Practice,” for Ryan, had served their purpose in his life. “I have absorbed what they have to tell me,” he said.

“[A bookseller] will have to get like 30,000 books, and then they can open a bookstore,” said Donovan. “They’ll collect books for years, but [at first] they’re not selling them.” Luckily for Donovan, his startup book injection came from a neighbor, Dan Seward of John Doe Records. Seward had roughly 50,000 books, amassed from donations and buybacks over nearly 30 years, from when his store was Hudson’s de-facto bookshop.

Donovan is also a musician, best known for one half of the duo Sic Alps, as well as other bands such as The Peacers. Donovan had met Seward at a gig in Chicago in 2011. When Donovan moved to Hudson in 2019, Seward and Donovan crossed paths again, and it was Seward who encouraged Donovan to open a bookstore in town, offering his collection as inventory, and sharing the sales. “If Dan hadn’t given me the idea, I probably would never have done it,” said Donovan. There were other key book suppliers throughout Old Books’ early life such as David Palmquist, who donated a storage unit containing roughly 30,000 books to Donovan, on the condition that he take over the lease of the storage space. Another was art critic Robert C. Morgan. When he died in 2024, it was Donovan who managed his book collection. If you see an obscure art book on the shelves of Old Books, it’s most likely thanks to Morgan. 

When on the hunt for books, Donovan takes a few things into consideration. “The cover, the content, and the cultural moment,” said Donovan, who has developed a sixth sense for detecting what will sell quickly, and what will gather dust on the shelves. He’ll go to library clearouts — but only at the end — to see which books have been passed over, giving him a sense of what’s hot in the used book scene. Sometimes he’ll go against the grain. He recalled encountering a book about barn building at a library sale in Chatham, one of the last books remaining after book buyers had picked through the wares. “An older crowd will have seen that book all the time,” said Donovan. “But a younger reader would love this,” he said. Indeed, it found its way to Old Books and was purchased shortly after. 

By the end of the morning, Donovan had taken about 60 percent of Ryan’s books. Some would go directly to the store, others to Donovan’s storage unit along Route 9, where they joined roughly 10,000 other books stacked neatly in boxes up to the ceiling, all awaiting their turn on the shelves of Old Books. From a stranger’s home, to a storage unit, to the shelves at 610 Warren Street, Donovan is shepherding books between homes and lives. 

A few days later, some of Ryan’s books were already in the window of Old Books, like “Sundials: A History of Theory and Practice.” Ryan was preparing for his move to Coxsackie. Donovan was already sifting through other collections. Before long, the book would likely be on the shelf of another perfect stranger.