Reality...an interesting concept with no successful applications, that should always be accompanied by a "Do not try this at home" warning.
Hundreds of years from now, it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove...But the world may be different because I did something so bafflingly crazy that my ruins become a tourist attraction.
"Oooh...ahhhh...that's how this all starts...but then there's running...and screaming..."
Marlon
See pictures of the Clinton-Golden Valley RR
ARTHILL wrote:I am fortunate that the trains are in the basement and so is my bathroom. Everytime I walk by I try to get 10 minutes in. I have 3 or 4 projects going at a time. It is amazing how much you can do with out ever really working on it.
When I was working I was close enough to home to come home for lunch. While my wife was getting lunch ready, I would sometimes go into the basement and work on small projects. I also would sometimes spend about an hour or two working on something just before bed time.
I'm retired now and although I'm in a different house, the basement is still the "train room." Once or twice a week I'll spend an hour or more on some project as I feel like it.
My major problem is spending more time on the rr forum instead of working on the rr! But I do enjoy the time with you guys also!
I'm retired, and you'd think there'd be plenty of time for layout work, but it just doesn't work out that way. Between lawn work, gardening and canning, kids, music, reading, keeping up on the news, camping and climbing, competitive shooting, computer work, woodworking, grocery shopping, house maintenence, and a social life, I feel like I'm running harder than when I was was working full time.
One trick I've learned, that applies to railroading and all the rest too, is to make use of tiny increments of time to prep for major railroading efforts. In the morning, for example, while i'm waiting for my coffee to heat up, I feed the cats and then have a minute or two extra timke left over.
By keeping track of where the layout is at, and where it need to progress, I know what the next major job will be at any given time. If I need to ballast 5 or 10 feet of track, I might use that free minute or two to gather up the ballast, paintbrushes, mix a little glue/water solution, find the bright boy, and get all those items over to the layout right where they need to be to start working at a moment's notice.
Then when a friend calls and is running ten minutes late, I can just walk over and knock out that section of ballast, making use of ten minutes that would otherwise be wasted. If I don't finish right then, everything stays in place for the next bit of free time to present itself.Then the next day, I can put that set of tools away during my waiting on coffee time, and start getting out the soldering iron, solder, heat sink, etc, to set up for the wiring job that's next on deck.
Another trick I found is to put...frequent...visitors to work. I have a friend who's an over the road driver, and he'll show up in town for a week at a time, and want to hang out here every day all day till he goes back out.
He's into military dioramas, so I bought the materials and tasked him with modeling a military train. I win two ways here, he's doing a phenominal job on the train, and having him busy in blocks of hours frees me up to get other work done on the layout.
Same goes for the kids. Thought they aren't as interested as I'd hoped, they do like to try new things, and they do have specific interests that coincide with railroading. My daughter especially likes to paint, so she paints many of our figures, and does a very good job. I rarely have to correct her work, because she usually paints the big areas, and I just finish the tiny details.
My son both enjoys and is a little afraid of woodwork and power tools, so he helps me with two man rips on the table saw, assembly with the cordless drill, etc. Oftwen we'll have a blue box party, each of us taking one aspect of a small fleet of freight car assembly, and knock out half a train in a single session. We've had similar sessions making trees.
Every time something new comes up on the layout, I make sure to work through a small part of it with them involved. We don't get much done, but they are at least exposed to the technique.
Finally, keeping tools and materials in specific sets while stored away saves a lot of time. Everything I need to paint plaster is stored in one place, ready to go, paints, brushes, tape, stirring rods, etc. Same for carving spackle, or laying ballast or soldering and wiring.
Hope this helps.
I'm currently in the process of building the benchwork for my second layout. I've been working on it since August. I spend most evenings and weekends on it.
The wife and I work 55 miles from home so we get up at 4:00am to be at work by 7:00am (she takes 1 hr & 45 min to get ready). If the traffic is good we get home most nights between 5:30pm - 6:00pm. (we travel I 95 from Washington, DC to Fredericksburg, VA). If you live in Northern Virginia you know how bad the traffic is!
I usually make it to the basement around 6:30pm and work on the layout until 8:30pm - 9:00pm.
Weekends I spend around 4-5 hours each day working on it.
Right now the wife is ok with the amount of time I've been spending on it. As long as we go out to dinner a couple of times a month and I spend a couple of evenings each week without working on it she doesn't have a problem with it.
Now that the cold weather is arriving we won't be camping. That will free up some time also.
As my Mom use to say "Where there's a will there's a way".
Bill
rlundy90 wrote:I was having a real problem finding the time for the hobby.I decided to have a heart attack and triple pypass surgery. That's given me three months free time so far to get alot of stuff done.
Dang! Now *that's* hardcore!
Ryan BoudreauxThe Piedmont Division Modeling The Southern Railway, Norfolk & Western & Norfolk Southern in HO during the merger eraCajun Chef Ryan
I work for a university that has a losing football team and a coach that everyone wants to fire. My schedule is 7:45am-4:45pm, and then I either spend time with my wife or work on trains or do household chores (depending on her work schedule...she usually works either 8am-4pm or 1:30pm-10pm). Even when she is at home, I usually try to get at least a few minutes in on whatever project I'm working on at the time. The only time there's a problem with that is when I get busy on something at the local club layout and lose track of time, and get home much later at night than she does. I try not to do that anymore.
Robert Beaty
The Laughing Hippie
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The CF-7...a waste of a perfectly good F-unit!
Then it comes to be that the soothing light at the
end of your tunnel, Was just a freight train coming
your way. -Metallica, No Leaf Clover
I'm working in my home office and have no fixed "office hours". The home office room is also the room where the modell railroad is.
Depending on the workload of my job I'm switching between work and hobby several times per day. That is usual very comfortable but it has it's limits if the airbrush is fully loaded and the office phone rings:-(
Reinhard
Good Morning!
I "retired" almost two years ago and yet find that I don't have (take?) the time for railroading as I thought I would. Being a 4 day a week caregiver and having the usual duties of a homeowner, I often wonder if I had more time for railroading when I worked, than I have now.
All that said, I have accomplished a few detailed structures, an almost total rewire of the 11x15 layout, and a revamp of some industrial sidings. Of the structures, one was a recreation in HO of my Grandmom's home in southern Illinois (Anna) next to the IC tracks. This was the most difficult kitbashing/scratch project I ever attempted as there was the prototype in my mind and pictures that I had to match. The project took about 40 sessions (at least), some lasting an hour and some 5 or 10 minutes. It was worth it, however!
Like a lot of modelrailroaders, I tend to do railroad work in "spurts", usually lasting until the project is done. And then I may leave the layout alone for a week or so. That is a plus of the hobby (I believe), in that you can "shut the door" when you just don't feel like it.
Oh, one thing I learned many, many years ago...... When I had a beer or three under my belt, or was upset, or just really not "in the mood", I stayed away from the trains.......
ENJOY,
Mobilman44
ENJOY !
Living in southeast Texas, formerly modeling the "postwar" Santa Fe and Illinois Central
Arjay1969 wrote: I work for a university that has a losing football team and a coach that everyone wants to fire.
I work for a university that has a losing football team and a coach that everyone wants to fire.
So, just to narrow this down, do you live in Nebraska or South Bend, Indiana?
shawnee wrote: Arjay1969 wrote: I work for a university that has a losing football team and a coach that everyone wants to fire. So, just to narrow this down, do you live in Nebraska or South Bend, Indiana?
Nope....Texas. College Station, specifically.
I am in total agreement with poster tatans that if your life is truly so busy and heavily committed that you have to pose this sort of question, you can pretty much forget model railroading as a hobby. This hobby requires time if you intend to practice it in any meaningful fashion. Endlessly planning and re-designing your "future" layout on some CAD program (as many today do), or puttering around just a few minutes a month on some highly rudimentary "layout", pretty much insures that you will never get beyond toy train/track-on-plywood stage, if even that far.
However, again just as tatans has said, I'd concur that the average person I meet is simply a time-waster and not nearly so "busy" as they think, or wish to claim. If you waste an hour or two on-line reading these message boards for entertainment, or by watching some mindless TV show(s), day in and day out, then it's your own fault that you can't accomplish anything as a model railroader.
CNJ831