Subject says it all.
I'll post my own thoughts a bit later on.
Mark P.
Website: http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.comVideos: https://www.youtube.com/user/mabrunton
For me it is a pure escape into a fantasy world of my own creation where nothing bad ever happens.
I don't model reailty, my models are definitely run through a rose coloured filter.
The real world stays out of my train room.
Escapism, that is what Model Railroading is for me.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
For me personally, like Kevin it is pure escapism. No matter the layout I have had over the years, just to escape the trials and trinbulations of life for an hour or more.
Now with five grandchildren joining in, seeing the enjoyment in their faces; even when they run trains seriously. They know they do there own thing when away from the layout, but in the train room 'it is another world'.
David
To the world you are someone. To someone you are the world
I cannot afford the luxury of a negative thought
"One difference between pessimists and optimists is that while pessimists are more often right, optimists have far more fun."
It depends on who asks. If the wife asks, then the answer is. It keeps me out of the bar rooms. Just kidding.
For me it's like reliving history in miniature. Watching a big decopods drag a long string of empty hoppers, I wonder about the iron men running it. Hand firing sixteen tons of coal in a twelve hour day. No one in there right mind would ever do that today.
Gaining knowledge and putting it to practical use is another big plus. I can actually say that I have tried new things and techniques for doing things.
Comradery in the club settings and the module group. Where people from all ages and walks of life can get together on a single subject. I can say that I have befriended people I never would have met without the hobby.
The diversity of the hobby itself. Scales, gauges, layouts, or just collecting. It's your hobby and you make the rules. Unlike my other hobby of RC helicopters and drones that the FAA and other government agencies are trying to ruin beyond repair.
Pete.
P.S. It gives me something to do when I'm bored. ; )
For the most part of 70 years (7 to 77), I've played with trains - Lionel, HO, and a bit of N. To me, the hobby has been:
- a pastime that kept me at home and out of trouble
- a creative outlet
- a recapture of a bit of my youth
- and during the difficult times, it was my "pacifier"
ENJOY !
Mobilman44
Living in southeast Texas, formerly modeling the "postwar" Santa Fe and Illinois Central
In short, I enjoy it, it's fun. Plus, I've learned so much from it. I've found it's a hobby where because there's so much one can do, it keeps me more engaged especially when I've taken on a substantial project such as building a shelf layout. Plus there is much joy for me in seeing a project unfold even after it being a many-month or many-year undertaking. It has always been a way to enjoy trains and get to see my favorite trains running and to enjoy in a miniature seeing trains that had been gone for decades run again, such as a New York Central Hudson pulling excursion trains as I'm working to recreate now.
Alvie
I don't just focus on trains.
I build models of cars, trucks, ships, figures, planes, buildings, et-cetera.
For me, it's a way to explore history.....
And, stay out of my wife's way ...
Rust...... It's a good thing !
It's my time machine, with three stops, the Transition Era, the mid-1930s, and the present. The present is for DCC and LEDs and all the modern stuff that supports them.
Like Mobilman, I've been doing this for 70 years, 5 to 75. It's a time machine in that respect, too. I can close the door, turn on the power, dim the room lights and be five years old again.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
It means:
A return to the heady experiences of being near working steam locomotives. My three or four earliest memories include seeing them work the yard at the INCO smelter in Sudbury, ON, in 1955. I couldn't tear my eyes away as we drove past.
Five years later, in Casapalca, Peru, at 10K feet, we had at least five Baldwin 2-8-0 standard gauge steamers go past us at a few feet below us, around a horseshoe, and come back past us the other way, but now 100' above our back yard. This was in a narrow alpine valley maybe 500 yards across, with steep mountains on either side of the Rimac River. We had maybe five hours of direct sunlight in that deep valley.
For me, now, it's nostalgia. It's something to do, a goal, even a challenge, when I'm in construction and scenicking. A diversion. I have never looked at it as a refuge. I don't need to absent myself from people generally, although I am an introverted personality, and can't take a lot of hubub for long. I'm grateful when we see our last guests out the door when my wife and I host. Glad to see them, just as happy to close the door behind them.
I'd like to see your thoughts, Mark.
It would be a long essay if I started listing everything I like about the hobby. I was in logistics for 36 years, moving stuff for the Feds using all forms of transportation available. For this reason, I have no interest in switching or operating for pretend as a screw-up does not cost huge money or other serious issues so I find it offers no challenge. For me it is the modeling and creating something that looks as close to real as I can get it, I have a long way to go on that front.
I am a very fit 65-year-old, I never nap, never get up at the night to pee, and can go all day. Last Christmas my wife bought me a Garmin 4 to monitor all my vitals. Looking back at my heart rate history since Christmas, what I found really interesting is my heart rate drops to about 40 BPM when I am doing two things, one is watching hockey and the other is when I am in the train room. It almost flatlines at 40.
All those times I came home from work after an exhausting 20-hour day, grabbed a glass of wine, and sat watching a train or two make those six-minute laps around the layout turned out to be pulling the plug on the adrenaline I still had pumping through me from my day. Anything that makes me relax as much as MRR seems to do must be good for my health.
Brent
"All of the world's problems are the result of the difference between how we think and how the world works."
I could write an essay, and I will. It will take a while. By the time I post it on here everyone else will have commented and moved on, so folks won't have to scroll over my Moby Dick of a response on their way to more succinct answers.
-Matt
Returning to model railroading after 40 years and taking unconscionable liberties with the SP&S, Northern Pacific and Great Northern roads in the '40s and '50s.
selectorFive years later, in Casapalca, Peru, at 10K feet, we had at least five Baldwin 2-8-0 standard gauge steamers go past us at a few feet below us, around a horseshoe, and come back past us the other way, but now 100' above our back yard. This was in a narrow alpine valley maybe 500 yards across, with steep mountains on either side of the Rimac River.
My railroading started just four years ago, about a year after I retired. I needed something to occupy my time.
I'm happy that I picked model railroading because it has given me a lot of pleasure in my leisure time.
I also found that something I didn't think I would like -- scratchbuilding -- has become my favorite part of the hobby. I never would have guessed.
I spent my entire working career dealing with teenagers, teachers, and parents. Model railroading has allowed me not to have to deal with anyone but myself.
York1 John
I used to tell folks that my trains were the only thing that I could control with certainy. Not true (for me at least) now that DCC is here. I can do the basics of DCC, but boy can I get confounded and bamboozled in a hurry.
selectorI'd like to see your thoughts, Mark.
My second earliest memory is of long strings of tank cars waiting to enter the Sinclair Refinery loading tracks in Casper Wyoming. (My oldest is of a silver and red toy airplane, but that's neither here nor there).
When I was eight years old I got a Lionel train set for Christmas.
I played with that thing for years!
When I was in junior high I met a couple guys who modeled in HO. That got me hooked, and all through my high school years I built a succession of not-very-good and incomplete layouts. But I was modeling by then, not just playing with O27 trains (nothing wrong with that, though).
In college I put away the trains, but after I started work I was right back into them.
During my working life I moved around every few years (itchy feet - I always liked to move someplace I'd never been before). There were several years-long gaps in my model railroading "career," but I built layouts almost everywhere I lived. Or maybe I should say I started layouts - every time I got the point of starting scenery I'd move again!
A few of the layouts...
California:
Kent, Washington (same track plan as the California layout):
And then with married life and a bit more stability, the first layout - the big one with the behemoth helix (over 8 scale miles of track) - in Merchantville NJ:
And then, with an unexpected work transfer to South Carolina, the layout in Allendale. This was the largest layout I ever attempted (as well as by far the nicest layout room I ever had), but its existence was cut short by the catastropic illness of my wife.
Through her illness and for nearly three years after her death I did no modeling, but I kept up on the hobby through modeling magazines and MRVP, among other things.
After retirement in 2018 I moved back to the old house I still owned in New Jersey, and began construction of another layout in the same familiar basement where I'd been building the big layout. But the punitive tax structure of New Jersey made it very difficult to stay there on my retirement income, so we (I was remarried) sold the house, tore down the layout again, and moved back to my childhood environs - Wyoming.
We've been here for 2 1/2 years. In retirement I finally have the time to devote to the hobby I always wished I had. I'm building what I think will be my last layout, which I'm chronicling on my YouTube channel and a thread here in the Layouts forum.
So with that outrageously long preamble, what Model Railroading has meant to me...
It has been the one constant throughout my entire life. It has defined me as much, if not more, than my career or the rest of my personal life. It has made the good times better (sometimes it was the good times), and it has made many of the bad times easier. It provided something of an escape from the otherwise almost unendurable loss of my first wife, even though I wasn't actively modeling at the time. Seeing the work of others and thinking about modeling in the future during that time gave me something to look forward to when nothing else did.
What it means now...
In short, almost everything. It's given me a deep-seated interest in finding out more about the history of the railroads in the era and location (right here where I live) I model, driving me to visit different areas of the state in search of small scraps of information about the rail lines, the industries, and the people. It provides most of my social life, and has introduced me to some really great folks, including local modelers and active and retired railroaders who lived railroading in this area. It keeps my mind active, as I'm still dreaming and planning what to do on the layout. It fills many hours with a tremendously creative range of activities.
What model railroading is for me...
A nostalgic trip to the past, twenty-plus years before I was born, in the same places I lived as a child.
Way too long - probably nobody read this whole thing. Sorry.
I read it. It makes sense. I hadn't realized, or maybe my retired brain, also tired, just doesn't recall that you lost your wife those years ago...already. I can tell from your words how much that devastated you. It would me, and would most of us reading. It seems you have a pretty solid partner helping you do stuff for the current build, and that's good to see.
Nostalgia figures in so many responses here. We were all children at one, time, young, callow, innocent, where the toughest part of the day was to leave our buddies in the playground or out by the pond and return home when called to dinner. When a train of any description rumbled past, we did the funeral thing; turned, stood up straight, and paid our respects.
I have mentioned it before, perhaps as recently as a few weeks ago; who doesn't remember what grandma's house smells like? Who doesn't get that familiar and comfortable feeling about our youth when we play with toy trains?
BTW, about Casapalca. I'm very pleased you took the time to look, crossthedog. For the sake of simplicity, I related the story the way we do when our family gets together and we reminisce. We talk about the mine postings my dad had while we were in Peru, and Casapalca was our second. We went to Cerro de Pasco twice, to a place called Mahr Tunnel, and to La Oroya where there was, and still is, a sizeable smelter where the company's ores were processed. But, the horseshoe curve is in our 'bedroom community' where the gringo higher-ups (my dad was the general manager of the mill) were housed. It might show up on google as Bella Vista. That's what it was called in 1959. If google presents it to you, you'll see the Rimac running down the middle of the valley, and immediately to one end of the arrayed houses, close-set, you'll see a horseshoe curve of rail. Further away was our one-room schoolhouse, a large inventory of stacked and creosoted crossties, and further yet, maybe 200 meters from the horseshoe, was a small hydro plant, I think with two small turbines.
Our neighbours lost their German Shepherd Rex on the horseshoe curve. It was eviscerated and cut in half by a passing train. Ghastly sight for a nine year old.
Here is a screen shot saved from google earth. From Casapalca, scroll toward the lower left, following the main road, and you'll encounter this. It's still Bella Vista:
You can see the blackened overlay of the horseshoe.
Hi Mark,
My basic reason for having trains is simply because I can finally have some trains of my own.
When I was a toddler my older brothers had a Marx O gauge train set. I was allowed to watch but I couldn't touch. I think that set up some very deep frustrations which were amplified by the time that I got to the age where I might have been allowed to operate it but that wasn't possible. The locomotive motor had burned out so the set was packed up and put in the attic.
I had pretty much forgotten about the train set until my mother pulled it out of the back of a closet and asked me if I wanted it. I didn't say no! The rest is history. I found a couple of replacement locomotives at a train show in Bracebridge, Ontario. I set the track up on a few sheets of plywood in the garage and ran trains! I took me less than a day to figure out that tinplate trains didn't work for me so I packed it all up again.
I casually mentioned to my wife that I would prefer the much more realistic HO trains, but I didn't take it any further. That Christmas she bought me the Bachmann HO Hogwarts Express and I realized just how happy it made me. Like I said, the rest is history!
Cheers!!
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
I worked at a stressful job for many years. Model railroading provided badly needed release from the stress.
Marlon
See pictures of the Clinton-Golden Valley RR
Friendships. My very oldest friend, someone I've known since I wandered away from home as a 4 year old and his mom marched me right back home - we were then in elementary school together -- is someone I am still good friends with because of trains and model trains, which is still mostly what we talk about when we see each other or exchange emails and phone calls. Other friends from my childhood I have fallen out of touch with.
My very best friend is someone I know solely because of trains. He was repairing my folks' garage, saw my workbench with model railroad stuff on it (which I had not cleared away when I went off to college in 1970), we got in contact and we've been friends ever since, soon it will be 50 years. There is simply no way I would have ever met this guy if he had not seen my HO trains in my folks' basement.
Other good friends are from my local NMRA Division, guys whose layouts I have operated on, railfanned with, go to train shows with. Maybe not the closest and deepest friendships, but genuine friends. And no matter how long the gap is between seeing each other there is always and immediately something to talk about, even if they are Lionel guys or Z scale guys or live steam guys, whatever. Even some friendships as a result of postings on these Forums, including some private messages.
I have other interests such as music and baseball and have friends associated with those; ditto old colleagues from work or from school. When I played golf I had golfing friends. But trains and model trains account for many, and the closest, friendships.
Dave Nelson
Time machine.
Recapture my youth.
Trains are something that's part of my soul.
Way to learn and study history and recreate it.
Stress relief and safe place.
Escape from an insane world.
Rest and relaxation.
Escape from a totally insane world. I truly fear the future direction of the USA.
Modeling trains of the 1970's or 1980's and before is a form of connecting with the America that used to be, where we could sit down and have an honest conversation, and perhaps agree to disagree on some things, but nobody's hair caught on fire, and nobody had to go shooting somebody, and snowflakes were those pretty unique things that only fell from the sky in the winter, and you didn't see snowflakes anywhere else. A connection with the America where in sports there were winners and losers, and people learned to deal with winning and losing as part of life without being triggered by it.
When I toured areas of the western states during 2000 and 2001 I was kinda amazed that out there, along the transcontinental railroads, Norman Rockwell's vision of America still existed. Cajon and Tehachapi were as they seemingly always had been. People seemed friendly and genuinely interested in the people they met along the way. Unlike the Northeast, they weren't trying to run you over or off the road to get where they were going.
When I watch my trains run laps around my mostly desert layout, that's the America I remember.
John
The best part of model railroading is that I get to make all the decisions and do it all my way - I did the group thing at work.
I like making stuff. Building layouts is a lot of fun. I also like building models whether kit or scratch/parts built.
I also like just running the trains and watching them.
I like doing some casual switching.
And I freely admit I just like collecting model trains. Going to train shows and just buying neat stuff.
Paul
PRR8259Rest and relaxation. Escape from a totally insane world. I truly fear the future direction of the USA.
Same.
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
riogrande5761PRR8259 Rest and relaxation. Escape from a totally insane world. I truly fear the future direction of the USA. Same.
Russell
Besides escapism for me, I like tinkering with something new while reliving a hobby that I enjoyed on/off since I was a kid.
Also, it's a place to commune with others who share this hobby (passion).
Growing up next to a Lehigh Valley staging yard back in the 60's, and for the past 32 years working as a New Jersey based industrial real estate broker i have been exposed to trains for the better part of my life. Fortunately I have access to restricted areas such as oil refineries, steel mills, LPG terminals, and at times the Oak Island & Port Newark / Elizabeth intermodel rail yards with clients. So even when not working i am in my basement escaping into a miniture size industrial world that I designed and am still in process of constructing after+8 years. Bayway Terminal NJ
JaBear, it must be more like 120 miles with all the switchbacks and horseshoe curves that the Ferro Carril Andeano, or Cental as it used to be when I was there, must use to gain altitude. There's one valley, near Matucana if I remember, or maybe it's San Mateo, where the train curves and rises into the valley for a bit. Then, it reverses and runs up another grade, backs out of the valley, and runs to another switchback. At Casapalca, it turns on the horseshoe and runs about a mile or so to a switchback, and then reverses up to Caspalca (seems to me the loco should have done a run-around and led the train again, but I don't recall seeing that the one time I walked to the switchback place).
The average gradient for the entire road, AFTER it gets to the foothills 15 or so miles east of coastal Lima, is 3.6% or so. It should be given some credit for being standard gauge as well.
There are videos on YouTube where you can be in a cab or a in speeder and see much of the tracks between Lima and Casapalca, even on to La Oroya.
Model railroading has been an escape for me, a relaxing time machine and for a while even provided a source of income. I was born after steam powered engines had already disappeared. I've never seen a S.P. Cab Forward thunder up Donner Pass, but I have a operating N scale model of one that gives me a pretty good idea what it must have looked like running.
As a boy my first model trains were HO, and later a 1'x3' display of a HO logging camp got me my first full time job working as a architectural model maker for a west coast model shop. Some parts of the job were fun (I mostly did scenery work along with casting and brass etching)) and other parts not so fun (ever grind up so much scenery ground foam that you start to look like a green Kermit the Frog?). Working full time meant any personal model train construction took a back seat.
After 7 years I got out of the model building business (due to reduced work), and started out in the travel business, working in corporate as well as adventure travel. I stayed out of the hobby for close to 15 years, and did other things such as mountain biking and backpacking. Around 2007 I got back into model railroading, this time with N scale. N scale is small (1:160), but when I built architectural models some of those scales were 1:400 or smaller so N scale doesn't seem so bad.
Since then I've tried to do new things. I've built a N scale 2'x4' coffee table layout, which is based on Hawaii, with a few scratchbuilt tropical style buildings, including a 2 story open sided bar and plantation style store. Two years ago I started converting many of my locomotives to DCC, yes even the SP Cab Forward as well as a SP Daylight GS-4 steam engine. Oil powered steam engines are very scarce in N scale, so last year I converted a Bachmann 2-8-0 Consolidation's coal tender to represent a converted oil tender. I'm still learning new model building techniques.
I kind of go in phases with model railroading and sometimes the model making side goes on the back burner. I enjoy outdoor photography, so about 10 years ago I started photographing trains on Donner Pass. I ended up photographing so many locations between Roseville, CA and Reno, NV that I ended up publishing a photo book of the area. My wife has been supportive of my hobby and has gone with me to several of my photo locations. One of those locations (near Alta, CA) has been a great place for us to enjoy a picnic lunch and enjoy the view looking out over the North Fork of the American River. The view from there today has changed little from what it looked like nearly 160 years ago when the surveyors first mapped the route.
I enjoy the hobby as a relaxing escape, so I think I'm doing things right.
Jeff B