"Hyce" (Mark Huber) is a Rail Enthusiast YouTuber and musician known for his railroading documentaries, a railroad themed Cooking Show and Let's Play series. Mark is a former BNSF railroad employee who had studied engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. During his time at the Colorado School of Mines he began volunteering at the Colorado Railroad Museum, and would eventually transplant to Colorado fulltime in 2022 to work at the museum.
Mark was an early member of the Railroads Online! development team, providing the original soundtrack to the game along with programming support. He and several other developers would eventually leave Railroads Online! and his soundtrack would be removed from the game, but he has since made it available elsewhere such as on Spotify
.
In July 2023, Hyce announced a return to developing rail simulator games with Century Of Steam, where he assumed the role of president of the indie developer company, Studio 346
Hyce's main YouTube channel can be found here.
Hyce's work contains the following tropes:
- Author Appeal: Anything regarding the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad or its connecting lines such as the Rio Grande Southern grabs Hyce's interest immediately.
- Cool Train: Self explanatory.
- Cooking Show: The K-37 Kitchen series which sees Hyce attempt to cook various foods on a steam locomotive.
- Edutainment Show: the various Hyce videos at the Colorado Railroad Museum embody this.
- Family Business Hyce's grandfather "Choo Choo Bob" (Bob Longnecker) was the inventor of early sound systems in model trains and had been featured in publications such as Model Railroader. Bob's collection of Rio Grande model trains sparked Hyce's interest at a young age. Hyce is also a distant relative of Edward Huber, who manufactured steam powered farming equipment in the late 1800s.
- Just Train Wrong: Many of Hyce's videos attempt to combat this, notably one where he tackles the long standing myth that standard gauge was derived from Roman chariot widths.
- Meaningful Name: The video game developer "Studio 346" takes its name from D&RGW 346, a locomotive at the Colorado Railroad Museum where Hyce works and an engine that is a favorite of his and of his late grandfather.
- Shout-Out: To Little Engines and Big Men by Gilbert A. Lathrop. The main issue though is the book originally published in 1954 is out of print... meaning Hyce's review and small readings from it are both a tribute to it and a way to Keep Circulating the Tapes until the book's copyright expires and it enters public domain, or the people holding the publishing rights decide to reprint it.
- Solo Side Project: Part of Hyce's reasoning in leaving the Railroads Online! dev team was to focus on his budding YouTube career, while also hinting at his own aspirations in game development which would eventually become Century of Steam.
- Steam Never Dies: Played with, since Hyce frequently visits many heritage and tourist railroads he shows plenty of locations where steam locomotives are still in use; but he doesn't mince words on why its so hard to keep steam locomotives running in the present day. His video on the East Broad Top Railroad produced in cooperation with Nick Ozorak might be the clearest example of this.
- The Dreaded Toilet Duty: Hyce's story from when he worked for the BNSF as a manager in a locomotive shop, and BNSF 1676 was pulled in for servicing only to find out the toilet pipe had broken and the human waste had filled the entire frame of the locomotive. The estimated weight of the excrement was about 2000+ pounds of waste, meaning it was literally a shit ton!
- Theseus' Ship Paradox: Hyce's argument that the K-37 is not a conversion of the older C-41 locomotives feels like a modern Ship of Theseus debate.
