What Brings People To This Hobby?

[Jetrock]

I figured I'd try to start a thread along a more positive note. We've mentioned some of the things that might stop someone from becoming a model railroader, but obviously that wasn't enough to stop us from trying!

So, I'd ask--what things bring people to the hobby? What attracts people to the idea of building worlds for tiny trains?

Any takers?

[Big_Boy_4005]

There's something fascinating about a train. I've loved them all my life, and I'm not sure why. Is it the motion? Maybe it's the mystery of where it's going. Or could it be the element of control? All I know is that I'm hooked!![swg]

[lupo]

My son!
at 17 I had to sell all model trains I had, but almost 25 years later my son ( 2.5 then ) got strucken by the train virus as we stood waiting for a crossing ( ting ting ting ) and a big yellow dutch train emerged from the woods.
From then on he was hooked, he preferred real train videos above Thomas the Tankengine ( trains do not have a face ! )
I made me pick up the hobby again, its cool to share a hobby with my son

btw like the positive idea behind this topic![8D][8D]

[MAbruce]

I re-entered the hobby much the same as Lupo did. My five year old son found my MRR boxes that had been packed away for many years. It fascinated him, and re-ignited my interest. A year later I had built a layout, and now he recently bought a loco of his own to run on it. My youngest son (now five) just received his first loco and is now torn between playing with his Thomas toys and running his new train with daddy on the layout.

I see it in Kids (and adults) eyes when they see a long train making its way around a large NTrak layout. You can just tell that the train bug has bitten. These kids hang on the ropes or stand on chairs with their eyes glued on the passing trains. The Adults openly marval at it and tend to ask many questions.

Jetrock – I appreciate how you are starting a topic on a more positive note. I thought it interesting that after my “What keeps people away” topic, I too tried to start a follow-on “What can be done” topic. It didn’t get nearly as many replies. I guess it’s in our nature to harp on more on what’s wrong rather than what’s right (or what can make it right). I hope this one can go further.

[Big_Boy_4005]

QUOTE: Originally posted by MAbruce


Jetrock – I appreciate how you are starting a topic on a more positive note. I thought it interesting that after my “What keeps people away” topic, I too tried to start a follow-on “What can be done” topic. It didn’t get nearly as many replies. I guess it’s in our nature to harp on more on what’s wrong rather than what’s right (or what can make it right). I hope this one can go further.

Isn't it funny how that works? [swg] I think that a lot of it has to do with the wording of the title.

[bcammack]

I do not think that there is any rational, dispassionate decision to become a model railroader. There are innumerable reasons one is drawn to this hobby. I suspect that most are initiated by some pleasant emotion that was triggered while viewing a model railroad at some place and time.

I was charmed by the N scale layouts of the Galveston County Model Railroad Club in the Texas City Museum. (www.gcmrrc.org) and realized that N scale would afford me the opportunity to have a creative outlet outside of computers that I'd been missing since I was a young boy. I always built car models and raced slot cars, but a hectic adult life of apartment living did not afford the luxury of a slot track, however a 2'x4' N scale layout was quite reasonable. Seeing their layouts prompted me to investigate and rediscover a childhood fascination with railroading which has resulted in my involvement with model railroading.

[Anonymous]

Wow, bcammack, that is a beautiful expression. In response to your comment on the Oct issue to me, maybe YOU should start a magazine. You have a way with words. Very nice!!
Back to the topic, accident. I was given a starter (cheap) train set years ago. I would bring it out at Christmas for under the tree (typical, huh!!) Last year, I found Model Railroader magazine, and this site, and it has been gung ho since. I have always loved trains (big, loud diesels) and that is what I will try to model.

[mondotrains]

Hi Guys,
I agree with Brett's comment above that model railroading brings back pleasant feelings that we experienced in the past. For me, it was that Christmas morning back in 1953 when I was 5 years old and "Santa" brought me a wonderful American Flyer set of trains. Dad and I set it up first around the base of the Christmas tree and later on a 4 by 8' sheet of plywood. I spent many hours in the basement, watching that train run around and around.

Skip forward to 1994, just as I was getting "downsized" from my position with a large insurance company after 22 years. I needed a way to fill my time and found myself attending a huge train show in Massachusetts put on by the Amherst Railway Society. I came home with and HO engine and some Athearn kits and that began my re-entry to the hobby.


Happy railroading and remember...Life is short....so play long and hard.
Mondo

[bcammack]

QUOTE: Originally posted by enduringexp

Wow, bcammack, that is a beautiful expression. In response to your comment on the Oct issue to me, maybe YOU should start a magazine. You have a way with words. Very nice!!

Darn. I hoped I deleted that post before anybody read it. It was impertinent and I shouldn't post before my third cup of coffee in the morning. [:)] I apologize for being a snip.

Thank you for the kind words.

[Anonymous]

Got my first layout at age 2.5 in 1969 - a square table of 3x3 ft with a circle and a little Märklin steamer and four cars. Was a starterset, cost 49 DM = 25 €/$

Until 1977 I think, the layout was more temporary - from x-mas to the end of January. From 1977 to 1989 I had a layout (Märklin) at home.

In the 80´s I came to prototype operations, have more books about 1-1 scale than 1-87. And this was the point when I changed from playing to modeling. My trains from then are prototypical like!
Because of this from 1986 to 2003 I was member in our local MR club. Scrapped my layout in 1989 when I changed from 3-rail Märklin AC to 2-rail DC - My layout was in the club. Belive it or not we had 70 - 80 members and only a maximum of 20 are model

In 1996 I started with US models and since 1999 I buy only US models.

The club don´t accept this change - stupid idiots [censored][banghead][X-)] - so I canceled my membership (was also the secretary) in mid 2003.

Today I built a UP depot at home.

[twhite]

In my case, I've been a model railroader for so long I can't even remember what brought me to it. I do remember that my great-uncle (and namesake) was a brakeman on the SP between Truckee and Norden, and one of my best childhood memories was riding the cab of an AC-6 articulated helper from Truckee over Donner Pass to Norden and back. Perhaps it was the fact that I badgered my parents for electric trains every Christmas (finally got one) and at the age of fourteen was introduced to HO by a friend of mine on our high school track team. He sold me an Athearn metal reefer, a Varney metal flat-car and an Ulrich metal gondola for the grand total of $5. Got me going. I bought an Athearn rubber-band drive diesel (SP Black Widow) and some track and darn near burned the thing up when I found out JUST IN TIME that HO worked on DC and NOT my Lionel transformer. Bought my first brass loco my senior year in college for the then-outrageous price of $45. It was a Santa Fe 1850 series 2-8-0 from PFM. Still have it. Still runs beautifully. What brought me to the hobby? First, a love of trains, second, it's been a gradual and un-interrupted love affair. Now that I'm retired, I can devote a heck of a lot more time to it. Best hobby in the world, I think.

[Anonymous]

I like to talk with the train geeks.....me included.

[Anonymous]

My return was last Thanksgiving when my oldest son opened a treasure chest and asked if we could play with the trains inside. Yes, he found the old footlocker with my brother and my old trains. I relaid the track and found out cleaning it would be a good idea before we ran trains.

What orginally actracted me? I'm a mechanical engineer so of course small mechanical things fascinate me. That and I like to build models. Probably won't blow them up on the Fourth of July anymore.

More than enthusiasm than skill right now but building a Kyle Hopper with my son is a blast.

DT

[Anonymous]

My Grandpa got me into trains
He bought me a few athearn freight cars and a loco when I was 2
I tried building a couple of layouts but they didnt turnout well
I boxed up what trains I had and now after 10 or so years I am back into it full bore I have nearly conquered the garage though my wife is holding onto her area. My grandpa quizzed and tested me on locos and other items of train knowledge. His focus was all steam he siad he didnt have any use for diesels
out of a collection of 500 engines I would say 10 were diesels.
I have a 3 year old little boy who has seen the 3985 twice and watches all of the train videos I have and he likes to come out in the garage and help me with the layout. He has a couple of kids videos and train sets but he loves them trains
so I am passing the love of trains to him.

[simon1966]

I stand by what I wrote in the "negative" side of the discussion!

QUOTE: [i]
I think model railroaders are the human equivalent of the secada (sp?) Whole generations of model RR's are dormant in the population. They don't yet even know their own destiny. One day they awake, they go to a GATS or see a relative or friends layout and they blossom into adult modellers. We get to witness this with a wave of new listers introducing themselves with "Hi, I'm 42 and just getting back into the hobby"

An adult modeller has a lifespan exceeding 20 years. This is the time of modelling fertility. Aside from creating a model railroad legacy in the physical sence, this is the time when the modelling seeds must be sown into the general population. Your own kids, your kids friends, nephews, nieces your own friends. It is a simple matter of statistics. The more dormant model RR's that enter the population, the more will hatch and blossom into adulthood.

[Anonymous]

In my case, I was riding museum trains with my Dad before I could walk. Back then, he modelled the Great Western Railway in OO scale (he still has most of his stock stored in the attic - I'm working on persuading him to build a new layout!). I started with the Brio wooden trains aged about 3, then went through OO, N, back to HO, and now own collections in HO, N and G scales. I'm more interested in building locos and cars than scenery, and I think this is probably for the same reason as a previous post - I have an interest in precision mechanisms. I've taken to buying non-functioning locos on eBay, one of which (after repair and detailing) has become one of my best yard switchers. I also find the reactions of non-railroading friends interesting - I hear everything from "toy trains" to "wow, cool". I also think it's kinda cool to buy stuff that will still be worth something in 30 or more years time, as long as it's looked after, and that you can have fun with in the meantime. There are few hobbies that manage to be both great fun and a good investment.

[Jetrock]

My dad got me into it. He was a railfan, not a hard thing to do growing up in Chicago, and he brought us along for the ride--one of my earliest memories is a railfan trip somewhere in the Midwest in the early Seventies. My brother and I were both of an artistic bent, and my dad encouraged us to help with his model railroading activities. My brother wasn't quite as interested in trains as I, and I was interested in other types of model-building as well (military modeling, fantasy/SF miniature painting, model cars, etc.)

It seems that it is very common for teenage modelers to get out of the hobby in their teens or twenties, and I was no exception--while I never stopped being interested in the hobby, I lacked money, space and time for it after college.

Things almost got rekindled when I went to the local hobby shop four years ago to buy a Victorian house model, to be part of a prize drawing. The urge sputtered a bit, and I think I went back once or twice to the hobby shop without buying anything.

Then, about three years ago this December, I was at my parents' house with some time on my hands and started flipping through my dad's railroad books. I ended up borrowing one, and a week later I came back to raid some boxes in the attic which contained much of the (rather dilapidated) collection of rolling stock, detail parts and other railroad knick-knacks from my youth. He wasn't using them, and welcomed me to take what I wanted (and free up more space in the attic!)

So thanks, Dad. Now that he doesn't really have the time or money for his own layout (talk about a reversal!) I try to include him in my enjoyment of the hobby by inviting him on fantrips and showing him my various works-in-progress. I don't know if I would have caught the MR bug without him, but he certainly helped encourage my interests.

[tstage]

Obviously, by the ideas already expressed, it's a multitude and myriad of reasons. For me it would probably fall into the following catagories: nostalgia, fascination, maturing, creativity, and relaxation.

Nostalgia - I grew up on S-scale. My older brothers were given a hand-me-down American Flyer set on a 4 X 8' sheet by my cousins before I was born. By the time I came along and discovered my innate (not to be confused with the word innane ) joy of trains, I was much too young to "run" the trains on my own. So, much to my one brother's chagrin, at the age of 2 or 3, I would grab a small stool so I could climb up on the train table and pu***he rolling stock around the over 'n under.

By the time I reached the age of 8, I had my own AF NW switcher with a gondola, reefer, and caboose. (Sadly, American Flyer went out of business shortly afterward. [:(]) From time to time I would sand the rust off the old steel track and get the old cast iron steamers and plastic diesels fired up and circling the track again. If was fun to sit in the dark and, just from the lights on the layout, watch the trains make their way around that tiny 4 X 8' circuit.

Fascination - As I alluded to before, I was a train nut practically from the time I was born. I don't even really remember a particular moment in time that I was smitten: it was just...there!

For me as a kid, I liked the "large" or real trains, but t was "model" trains that really caught my fancy. I wasn't blessed with the innate (there's that word again!) mechanical know-how of my older brother. That still didn't keep me from taking a screwdriver and removing the plastic shell off the NH diesel E or F-unit and peering inside to see how it worked.

At age 14, I took a short excursion ride on the Bear Creek RR (Robbinsville, NC) on an old Shay with my mom and buddy of mine. It was fun but I don't think I really gave the old steamer a 2nd glance. (Hardly, even a first one, for that matter. What was I thinking?!?) I never lost a fascination with trains but other things (music, college, life, etc.) took more of a precedence.

Maturing - There's something about reaching your 40's. A couple of Christmases ago, I had some extra Christmas money "burning a hole in my pocket" and I made the fatal mistake of visiting a local hobby store in town. On a "premeditated whim", I brought home a Rivarossi 0-8-0 Yard goat and set up an oval around our Christmas tree. (Unfortunately, the Rivarossi quickly developed problems so I returned it and exchanged the 0-8-0 for a Genesis 2-8-2 "Mike". NO COMPARISON!!!)

Over the years, thanks to good books, magazine articles, and well-written and well-presented documentaries on TV, I have become more intrigued, appreciative, and passionate about history. Along with that, I have an almost insatiable desire to know how and why things work (I think age and a trip to Steamtown in Scranton, PA tends to do that to people.)

As a kid, I couldn't tell you what the various parts of a steam locomotive were or did, or the purpose of the different rolling stock. Now, I am enjoying learning (albeit slowly) and gathering information on and about railroads, railroading, and the various aspects of it. (I.e. Interlocking towers, the purpose of sand, how turbines work, ball signals and semaphores, how steam engines work - just ot name a few. )

Some of this should "theoretically" fall under the category of fascination. But this fascination is mainly due to a sense a maturity of why I have come to this point - hence the reason for leaving it here. When you learn where you came from and where you are now, you become more appreciative of what it took to get from there to here. Does that make sense? Seeing how the railroad was such an integral part of how our nation grew and sustained itself, makes me even more intrigued with the hobby. It helps too that, even though I never knew or met him, my grandfather was a fireman on an Arkansaw railroad and my grandma was a telegraph operator for the railroad in Marietta, OH. (Hence, how they met.)

Creativity and relaxation - For the past 2-1/2 years, I had been planning a layout for the basement. This past May, construction started and I put together my first layout table using extruded foam. As I began to try new different configurations, build and paint structures, kitbashing, and put together rolling stock kits, surprisingly, the joy of all the above mentioned reasons began to culminate: nostalgia, fascination, maturing (i.e. learning).

Presently, I am enjoying trying to create an accurate and historical representation of life on a small fictitious NYC interchange in the 1940's in HO - incorporating both steam (the past) and early diesel (the present or early present). I find the "process" both creatively challenging and relaxing. "What can I add or change to this structure to make it even more real on my layout?" (I've added inside floors to a couple of buildings. I'm starting to muse over lighting the inside and outsides, as well.) My wife enjoys coming downstairs to the basement to read, and actually finds the "clickity-clack" of the metal wheels on the track "soothing". I'm trying to convince her that a "sensorround" version (i.e. an around the wall layout) would even be more soothing. [:D]

The research, constuction, and completion of my layout will, in all likelihood, take time (and money). But that's one of the joys of model railroading: You get to watch your small diorama of history slowly come to life; at the same time enjoying the journey of learning and creating along the way.

To directly answer the question of "What Brings People To This Hobby?", I would like to end on just one more thought. When I recently came into model railroading, it was initially for one reason: I love looking at model railroads! However, much to my surprise, once I started getting into the hobby more, I discovered a plethora of things that I didn't know that would interest me - a few of which I only elaborated on in this post. So I came into MR for one reason; I'm now into it for a number of them!

Okay, this dissertation is long enough! Sorry about being so long-winded [:(] but hopefully that gives you an idea of where I'm coming from. Jetrock, thanks for another good post! [^] I wish some of the other ones were as thought provoking...

Tom

[Kimble]

I've known about MRRing all my life (I'm 37). When I was a kid, we had a large layout in our basement. I think my dad got into it when he was a kid in the 40's. He used to mention he had a circus train where you could unload and set up a big top. Anyways, I know my grandfather was into MRR. We have a great old black white photograph of him working on a scratch built flatcar. Railroads are in the family too. My Great-grand-father, Archille, was a fireman on the Grand Trunk (in 1910) then an Engineer for the Maine Central. His brother Lucian worked at the Rigby yards.

By the time I was a teenager, MRR was "out" and Dungeons and Dragons was in. Later, in my 20's, I was really into table top wargaming. We collected armies of 25mm lead figures to paint and built terrain. Thinking back, I loved the painting and constructing but found most battles long and complicated (made so by rule mongers). When I got married in my 30's, I tried to wargame, but with a wife, I couldn't devote entire weekends to the hobby ;). Having a child ended any wargaming what so ever.

So, I've been searching for a hobby that I can do at home. A couple of years ago I picked up the Walthers catalog just to flip though it and dream. I loved MRR with my family and thought that it could be a great father & son thing for me. Well, my boy is 2 & 1/2 and loves "choos choos". We play with his Brio set every day and look at the pictures in Model Railroader together.

Why do I like trains? Because they are big and powerful and go places. More so, they go places where cars don't. I'm always intrigued by a set of tracks. Where do they go? Where did they come from? I can drive down a road but why can't I drive down the tracks? Having a degree in history and studied some arhcaeology, I'm intrigued by old building along side a set of rails. If I woke up and was the only person in the world, I'd be breaking into old building to see what was there ;).

A few years ago I took Amtrak from Conn. to Washington D.C. Since then I've taken the new service from Portland, Maine to Boston. I love seeing the backyards of America from the train. It's amazing how much junk people throw down by the tracks.

Why do I like MRR? Because you can set up a long trains and drive it around! Heck, no one builds model highways! They are so boring!