Dean K. Fick, author of The Lakeside and Marblehead Railroad, was born in 1963 in Sandusky, Ohio, one year before the L&M shut its doors. He lived for the first five years of his life at a cottage in Lakeside which, coincidentally, was located about 1,000 feet from the L&M's track. In 1968, Dean's parents bought a farmhouse and some adjoining property on Hartshorn Road in nearby Danbury Township, with the former Lakeside & Marblehead Railroad forming the northern boundary of the property.

At this time the L&M was closed as a common carrier railroad, but the Standard Slag Company was still operating it as an industrial line. Dean was fascinated by the ex-L&M first-generation diesel locomotive that occasionally passed by his house. As he tells it: "I used to run outside whenever I heard John Gdoviciak [the engineer] blowing the horn for the Quarry Road crossing. As the train went by, he would always wave and blow the horn again--just for me." Eventually Gdoviciak invited Dean and his father to ride with him on a round trip from Dean's house to Danbury Yard and back. During the trip, Gdoviciak put six-year-old Dean in the engineer's seat and allowed him to actually operate the engine part of the way back. "From then on," Dean says, "I was hooked on the L&M and wanted to know everything about it."

As Dean grew older, he continued to build his knowledge about the line. When the railroad operated for what turned out to be the last time, in 1978, he carefully documented the operation with photographs and notes, often walking several miles per day to Lakeside Yard and back to count the number of cars handled and to take photographs. He interviewed several former employees. Eventually he met and became friends with George Danchisen, a local railroad buff who in 1982 singlehandedly saved many of the L&M's records from destruction.

After college, Dean moved away from Ohio to begin a management career in the IMAX large format cinema industry that took him to Kennedy Space Center, Florida; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Birmingham, Alabama. During these years, George Danchisen continued to collect artifacts from and information about the L&M in Ohio, while another railfan, Peter Carr, in Maine, did the same thing. In 1997, Dean founded Montevallo Historical Press, Inc. to re-publish George W. Hilton's 1964 classic book, The Toledo, Port Clinton and Lakeside Railway. As Dean puts it, "I was also very interested in the TPC&L and was amazed at how well the Hilton book did when I released it. It convinced me that if I put forth the effort to write a detailed history of the Lakeside and Marblehead, there would indeed be an audience for it."

Dean began conducting extensive research in late 1997, when he took three trips to Ohio, Massachusetts, and Maine to visit research libraries and to meet with George Danchisen and Peter Carr. Both men generously agreed to share their vast L&M collections with Dean. He notes: "As I accumulated more details about the L&M and its operating environment, I began to realize how unusual the Marblehead Peninsula was because of the amazing variety of railroad infrastructure that developed in such a small area. Within ten miles, one could find the mighty New York Central, a heavy shortline, a spectacularly long-lived electric interurban, and extensive narrow gauge industrial trackage. Then there was the fact that the L&M as a steam railroad cooperated for many decades with the interurban that made the area even more special from a railroad enthusiast's point of view."

After completing final research at the National Archives, Dean began to write the manuscript over Christmas1998. By the end of 1999, after moving to Ohio to become Director of Theaters for the gigantic new COSI Science Center, the job was done. The book was printed in early 2000 and released to the public on March 21st. "I hope that everyone who reads The Lakeside and Marblehead Railroad will feel as close to the L&M as I did writing it," says Dean. "From its tremendous variety of rolling stock, to the wonderful attitude of the men who worked there, and the prosperity its owners enjoyed, it truly was a spectacular line in many different ways."