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What's with model railroaders....are most of them "loners"?
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A friend of mine has a basement filling layout that a bunch of us get to operate every third Wednesday. Some of the crew have their own home layouts, some like me do their modeling on modules, while others are perpetual armchair modelers. <br /> <br />I don't have a great interest like others in operating. If I run one through train an evening, it's enough for me. I'm there mostly for the socializing, talking about the latest toys, news, gossip, etc. There are up to 15-20 people at these sessions, so there are always some around waiting for their train time. When I'm not operating or yammering, I try to take some hand held digital photos without getting in the way of others. <br /> <br />To a few of the guys, like the owner, operating is their main passion in the hobby. They look at each train as a chore or puzzle they want to solve. I'm a model builder and photographer, and that's where I have my quality time. <br /> <br />Our modular club's meetings are pretty all business, so we don't get to do much other socializing otherwise. Some club members never come to these operating sessions, as they have no interest whatsoever. They mostly collect all the latest trains without having any way to operate them. <br /> <br />So just in our group we have operators, non operators, and the rest. If you build a decent layout and have a reasonable expectation of operators, the word will get around. <br /> <br />I know another modeler with a large layout, and he lives about a five hour drive from me. A few of the locals were going to go for a visit, and I was going to tag along. I mostly wanted to snap some digital photos of the layouts and see what they had been doing. <br /> <br />Prior to our visit, we were given the rules for visiting operators - NO photos during the session, NO talking during session as it slows things down, NO break until the session was over - about four hours. <br /> <br />They took their hobby of operating model trains way too seriously for me, the sessions sounded more like a work assignment rather than a hobby activity. I quickly lost interest and did not bother going. These guys were so immersed in the "job" of handling model trains that it turned me off. Life is too short to have to play under such restrictive rules for me. <br /> <br />Bob Boudreau
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