BIOGRAPHY

It was during his senior year in high school that Tim wrote his first book, a novel called "The Meatloaf Incident and Other Adventures" that is based on his experiences growing up in a rural community. After receiving college degrees in History, Accounting, and Business Administration (MBA) he went to work in the nonprofit field, holding positions in accounting and senior management. In 1997 he moved to the Town of Milton and for many years served as the Treasurer of the Saratoga County Historical Society (Brookside) Board of Trustees, but in 2014 reluctantly moved to Glenville to be closer to work.

After noticing many ruins around the Town of Milton, he began researching the town's history. The discovery of an old trolley railroad bed behind his house motivated him to write a book about the line's history (the Ballston Terminal Railroad). That project naturally led to another one that detailed the industries served by the railroad. When it was discovered that several important inventions were developed to support these industries, other projects unfolded that resulted in books about Ballston Spa and Saratoga County inventions. 

In early 2009 Tim began working on biographies of "Paper Bag King" George West and local edge tool manufacturer Isaiah Blood. In 2010 he submitted manuscript proposals to the History Press for "Great Inventors of New York's Capital District" and "Lost Industries of Saratoga County," both of which were accepted and published. A long-standing interest in local railroads resulted in the books "Early Railroads of New York's Capital District" (2011), "The Golden Age of Railroads in New York's Capital District" (2012), "Railroading in New York's Capital District: Hot Off The Presses" (2012), and his most popular book, "Railroad Wars of New York State" (2013, Arcadia). These four were all researched and written concurrently to ensure consistency among them.

After writing about the past industries of Ballston Spa and Saratoga, Tim noticed that no book had ever been published dedicated to the important and varied industries of Albany County, so a project was undertaken to publish "Lost Industries of Albany County, New York," which he self-published in 2013. 

Arcadia Publishing contacted Tim in 2015 with a request to fill the gap left in their "Images" series within Saratoga County. This resulted in the book "Around Milton, New York," which includes Ballston Spa, Bloodville, Milton Center, Pioneer Woods, and Rock City Falls. Arcadia then requested he fill another gap in their "Images of Rail" series, which led to  "Railroads of New York's Capital District" being published in 2020. To date the latter is Tim's second-best-selling book behind Railroad Wars. 

A life-long interest in maps and railroads led to an idea of publishing atlases of New York State railroads, so in 2020 Tim began organizing and researching the hundreds of maps in his collection. So far this effort has led to the self-published "Railroad Atlas: New York's Capital Region" and "Railroad Atlas: New York State." A future atlas will cover New England. 

Other subjects that are not well documented are railroad locomotive terminals, roundhouses, and back shops. A book about roundhouses was started in 2017 that was finally completed in 2022 called "Stables of the Iron Horse: A Definitive History of the American Roundhouse." More than enough pictures and research material are left over from this effort for a follow-up book about roundhouses. 

Perhaps Tim's favorite project to date is a three volume series about steam railroad "back shops." It is a nice combination of his interests in both railroads and large industrial buildings of the past. It's also a subject that has not been covered very well in the press. There are a few books about individual shops, but none that contain all of the major repair shops across the country. Each volume is over 350 pages and has information, pictures, and graphics that haven't been published since the early 1900s. Tim has collected thousands of photos and articles over two decades, but putting them all together into manuscript form took three additional years.  

A book sure to illicit fond memories of those who rode passenger trains in the 1950s will enjoy "Life Along the Railroad: Photo Album of 1950s Middle America," published in late 2024.

Although local history research is "just a hobby," the preservation of that history has been a focus for the past 25 years. He contributed to Ann Hauprich's book "Legacies Unlimited" with a chapter titled: "Timothy Starr: He (Literally) Wrote the Book on Village Inventors." In 2009 he contributed a piece about Saratoga County inventors for the Brookside Museum's book "In Our Own Words: The Story of Saratoga County." In 2015 he authored a chapter about industries for Field Horne's "Saratoga Springs: A Centennial History." He has also been published in Saratoga Living, Our Town Ballston Spa, Spotlight Milton, The Saratogian, the Troy Record, and was a frequent contributor to Ballston Spa Life's "History Lesson" series. On February 6, 2011, he appeared on WNYT News Channel 13's interview show called Forum 13 in which he discussed the book "Great Inventors of New York's Capital District." On February 17, 2016, he was interviewed by Bob Cudmore for "The Historians" podcast series. In 2021, the Saratoga County Historical Society (Brookside) released a book titled "Saratoga County Stories" that contains a series of historical essays, a few of which were written by Tim. In 2022 Brookside added a second volume of this series ("More Saratoga County Stories"), which also has Tim as one of the 33 author contributors.

His collection of historical data includes 2,000 Capital Region patents, dozens of local (New York State) history books, over one hundred railroad-related books, thousands of digital history articles, thousands of newspaper articles, and 23,000 photographs. About 85 percent of his written collection is digitized into PDF files, while all of his photographs have been painstakingly digitized for future use and distribution to nonprofit organizations.