Managers

Dana Brisendine, Fundraising Committee Chair

Dana Brisendine is the President of HMS Capital Management, LLC and is the Managing Member of the 576 Family of Hedged Equity Funds who has been in the investment management field for over twenty-five years. She started her career as a portfolio manager at the Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System, where she was part of a team managing the State of Tennessee Pension Fund.  While at the state, she was one of the first female portfolio managers.

A Nashville native, Dana graduated from Belmont University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration and Finance.  She also holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation.  Dana is actively involved in the Downtown Rotary, and has served on the boards of the National Association of Women Business Owners and the National Association of Women MBAs.

Dana developed a love of No. 576 as a small child when she visited Centennial Park with her father. The two of them spent many of weekends climbing on the locomotive and exploring Nashville’s history. She happened to marry a rail enthusiast and the two of them have spent many hours visiting historic railroad sites and riding along behind vintage locomotives.

Joey Bryan, Communications Manager

Joey Bryan is a native of Franklin, Tennessee and spent his adolescence visiting No. 576 in Centennial Park. Joey is a preservationist, historian, and writer with a passion for saving America’s industrial heritage. He earned a B.A. in History from the University of Alabama in 2012 and a M.A. in Public History from Middle Tennessee State University in 2015. While at MTSU, he worked as a research assistant at the Center for Historic Preservation.

In the summer of 2013, Joey interned at the Virginia Museum of Transportation during the kickoff of the “Fire Up 611!” fundraising campaign. He worked for the museum the following year as Assistant Communications Manager assisting with social media, marketing, and media relations during Norfolk & Western 611’s first excursion season. Because of his involvement with the 611 restoration effort, Joey wrote his master’s thesis on the economic and interpretive benefits of collaborative partnerships between railroads and non-profit organizations for the operation of steam-powered excursions.

Joey’s ties to Nashville railroading date back to his great-grandfather who worked for the Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis Railway as a clerk in the general office building on Broadway. Joey also serves as Vice President of Nashville Steam

Stephen Hook, Shop Foreman

Stephen Hook was born in Nashville and raised in Franklin, Tennessee. His passion for railroad history and preservation began at a young age, inspired in large part by visits to see Locomotive No. 576 in Centennial Park. In 2012, he joined the Tennessee Central Railway Museum (TCRM) as a volunteer, contributing to the safe restoration, maintenance, and operation of historic passenger cars and diesel locomotives. In 2016, Stephen also began volunteering with Nashville Steam, supporting early restoration and field work. He earned his passenger conductor certification in 2017 and qualified as a locomotive engineer in 2022. Stephen holds an A.S. in Engineering Systems Technology from Columbia State Community College, awarded in 2021.

Stephen began his professional railroad career in 2019 as a mechanical apprentice with FMW Solutions, where he was assigned to the restoration of USSC No. 148 in Clewiston, Florida. Since then, he has gained extensive hands-on experience restoring and operating steam locomotives across the Eastern United States on both short line and mainline railroads.

In addition to his railroad work, Stephen maintains an eight-year career in the volunteer fire service. He currently serves as a firefighter and engineer with the Pleasant View Volunteer Fire Department in Pleasant View, Tennessee. Beginning his service in 2017 with the Williamson County Rescue Squad, he has earned more than 20 state certifications in firefighting, swift-water rescue, and technical rope rescue.

Since 2020, Stephen has served Nashville Steam as Volunteer Coordinator and Shop Foreman. In these roles, he has successfully led and expanded a dedicated team of volunteers, helping cultivate a safe, educational, and productive work environment. Through his leadership, the organization’s volunteer base has grown into a confident and skilled team prepared to support the next generation of historic preservation.

Austin Meredith, Volunteer Coordinator

Austin Meredith hails from Bowling Green, Kentucky where he earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Western Kentucky University in 2022. After graduating, he moved to Tennessee where he works as a Mechanical Engineer in the electric utility industry.
Austin is passionate about historic railroad operations and maintenance. He is fortunate to have traveled throughout North America by rail and visited many historic railroad operations growing up. He first joined and volunteered with Nashville Steam in 2019. Following engineering school, he became an active volunteer in the Nashville Steam shop. He is also a regular volunteer with the Tennessee Central Railway Museum both in the mechanical shop and on the operations crew where he is currently a student Conductor. His duties with NSPS include scheduling and conducting volunteer safety classes and coordinating volunteer work sessions.

Marissa Pappas, Membership Coordinator

For most of her life, Marissa’s fascination with trains often meant she was the only one excitedly waving at crossings or talking in hyperfocus about them to humoring friends and family. That was until she found NSPS, which gave her people with shared passion for trains and history– and her very first encounter with a steam locomotive, No. 576. 

Born in suburban Ohio, raised in a Georgia kudzu thicket, and rounded out between Nashville, Tennessee and northeast Indiana, Marissa’s a Midwest-Southeast hybrid. Her professional identity is similarly varied with ten years in nonprofit and hospitality work spanning social services, conservation, bartending, and restaurant management.
Marissa supports NSPS operations with donor database administration, which is kind of like gratefully fielding 576 and NSPS fan mail. She’s also been lucky enough to get her hands and a good pair of Levi’s dirty in the shop. She hopes her four- and six-year-old nephews will love trains as much as she does and plans to buy them their first train set in 2026.

Julie & Rich Bayhi, Company Store Managers

Julie and Richard Bayhi serve as co-managers for the NSPS Company Store, and reside in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee. They always look for new and exciting products to offer on the NSPS webstore, eBay, and in person at various train related events and shows. Both are graduates of the University of New Orleans.

Julie is a New Orleans native and received a B.S. in education, with a history major and a math minor. She is retired from teaching after 30 years as a high school advanced math teacher in both Louisiana and Tennessee. In 2004, Julie served on the curriculum writing team for the guaranteed curriculum program for the State of Louisiana; that same year she was nominated for Educator of the Year. When she’s not working with NSPS, Julie also volunteers at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, where she conducts both school tours and VIP tours.
Richard is also a native of New Orleans, and has previously served as a financial advisor to the NSPS board of directors. As an accountant for over thirty years, he was employed by the Oreck Corporation for twenty-seven years where he managed treasury and cash functions, sales audit and physical inventories for retail locations, and retail lease administration. Richard also authored the company newsletter. He is currently employed by Genesco in Nashville as a lease accounting specialist. Richard’s father, a WWII veteran, was a draftsman in the marine industry, mainly designing pressure vessels, along with former employees of Higgins Industries, builders of the PT and LCVP boats used during the war.
Julie and Richard are past members of the National Railway Historical Society, New Orleans Chapter – where they frequently served as car hosts, and assisted with souvenir sales during the Southern Railway Steam Excursion program, which featured such steam engines as 4501, 722, 750, 630 and CP 2839. They have also had the opportunity to take other steam trips, including NS excursions with the N&W 611 and 1218, as well as the Durango and Silverton in Colorado, and many others. They both love the outdoors and their goal is to one day visit all of America’s National Parks.