Well I just had one of these comments tossed my way yeaterday so i thought I would share it. Discussing my Model Railroading and scale modeling I do with a co-worker, a second co-worker (male) asked, 'and you don't still live with your mother?'
... the abuse I get!
Gary B
Fox River Valley Railroad
Wnen I began this thread last week, I thought mabye a few replies and a few hundred views...not 4700 and eight pages of replies. I had no idea that so many have endured so many verbal....attacks?? (maybe not the best choice of a word, but it works for me).
When my mom was an elderly single she would often take first dates to the movies for an elementary test. That was to see how long they could last without a trip to the boys room. I did almost the same when I was single for over 20 years....I'd take first dates to either a train show, model railroad open house or a hobby shop. This worked great, and I did not care a bit how beautiful they were, how wealthy, and how well endowed.........only if they showed a little interest or at least the possibility of support. Many times they did not. One gal really liked me (yeah..I know, she was nuts!) and as we left a hobby shop, she commented...."is this what I can look forward to in our future?" I have never seen a woman's looks change from Jenifer Anniston to Ernest Borgnine in such record time.
My current wife, Sandy is a full professor at U of Md. and obviously an acedemic (I'm not). When we met she had a small model railroad set up in a guest room. She found these at a yard sale and kept adding to them....also having a lot of fun. As luck would be, she is quite nice looking, but she could have looked like Borgnine, and I would have been hooked.
Point of all of this.......I don't have a clue!
HZ
Since so many offer words of wisdom....here are mine...."It is better to be seen than viewed."
In the "Bowled over with Feathers" department, 99% of my classmates made comments about playing with trains. Then a nice girl two years ahead of me makes the comment on my Facebook album of the model railroad club
"Awesome pictures morgan. I do have to say that I am a bit jealous that you have such a passion about something, and I have yet to find mine!"
Sometimes, the people you think aren't looking are the ones who figure it out best.
-Morgan
citylimits I don't encourage non-modellers or people I know have no appreciation of model railroading or building models of any type. I don't enjoy their company and I'll be darned if I'm going to spend any of my time fending off inane comments and smart alec remarks from folks I hardly know and don't like very much anyway. Often in an evening my wife and her loopy friends come down to see me after they've been relaxing up stairs with a bottle or two of something or other taking it easy after a gruelling day of talking a load of nonsense to their clients.They are a nuisance as well. My layout and hobby area is a place where I like to work, enjoy my hobby with my modeling friends. All others can go some place else for their entertainment and edification. I don't care where. Bruce
I don't encourage non-modellers or people I know have no appreciation of model railroading or building models of any type. I don't enjoy their company and I'll be darned if I'm going to spend any of my time fending off inane comments and smart alec remarks from folks I hardly know and don't like very much anyway.
Often in an evening my wife and her loopy friends come down to see me after they've been relaxing up stairs with a bottle or two of something or other taking it easy after a gruelling day of talking a load of nonsense to their clients.They are a nuisance as well.
My layout and hobby area is a place where I like to work, enjoy my hobby with my modeling friends. All others can go some place else for their entertainment and edification. I don't care where.
Bruce
There's rioting in Africa;
There's starving in Spain;
There's hurricanes in Florida;
And Texas needs rain!
The whole world is festering with unhappy souls;
The French hate the Germans;
The Germans hate the Poles;
Italians hate Yugoslavs;
South Africans hate the Dutch;
And I don't like anybody very much!
From the far, far reaches of the wild, wild west I am: rtpoteet
rogertra Anyone could comment on my GER. Good or bad it didn't matter. I never took offence. The first thing I did was consider the source of the comments. A person 's comments, pro or con, who was more skilled and knowledgeable than I was carried more weight than someone who was perhaps less skilled and knowledgeable than I. Otherwise, just water off a Duck's back. Remember, not everyone likes the Mona Lisa so not everyone will like your work.
Anyone could comment on my GER. Good or bad it didn't matter. I never took offence.
The first thing I did was consider the source of the comments. A person 's comments, pro or con, who was more skilled and knowledgeable than I was carried more weight than someone who was perhaps less skilled and knowledgeable than I.
Otherwise, just water off a Duck's back. Remember, not everyone likes the Mona Lisa so not everyone will like your work.
Funny you should mention da Vinci because awhile back I caught a blurb on Ovation TV (I believe) that there is growing suspicion that da Vinci may not have been quite the brilliant artist he has been portrayed as being; rather he was quite adept at painting from a camera projection on canvas. In fact it is suspected that a lot of those Renaisance painters used a camera for their artwork.
Mike Kieran P.S. My wife calls my looking at train sites looking at porn since I drool sometimes.
P.S. My wife calls my looking at train sites looking at porn since I drool sometimes.
Both of us here look at those sites as train p0rn....much like my synthesizer p0rn....
Any argument carried far enough will end up in Semantics--Hartz's law of rhetoric Emerald. Leemer and Southern The route of the Sceptre Express Barry
I just started my blog site...more stuff to come...
http://modeltrainswithmusic.blogspot.ca/
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Mike Kieran
Port Able Railway
I just do what the majority of the voices in my head vote on.
I've been into model railroading for close to 35 years. Everyone that knows me is aware of my love of trains. So when my wife first met me, she knew all about them. I also don't plan on building the Northeast Corrider, just a shortline on a tabletop oval. What makes my wife wonderful is she cannot understand why women want to change their husbands since this is who they met in the first place. She figures that we go to a lot of events that she wants to see, so it's a fair tradeoff.
Plus, as an operations hound, I'm always learning about different industries associated with railroading. My wife sometimes uses reading material that I have for lessons in her class (she teaches 8th grade Language Arts) regarding history and economics. I have a model of a European box car that she uses for Holocaust lessons.
When we first started dating, she told me that she wanted to go to Pennsylvania Amish Country. What does that mean to train lovers? Everybody all at once - STRASSBURG!!! We got tickets for the dinner train (always a good idea for something different and interesting), and arrived a half hour before the train was scheduled to depart, and I asked her if I could take some pictures of the equipment. So she sat on a bench near two other women while I and their husbands began photographing the equipment. Immediately seeing the is-this-going-to-be-my-future look on her face, one of the women told her "you'll always know where he is."
Like what has been mentioned by others earlier, I explain that unlike smoking and drinking, I get to keep my trains pretty much forever and that if I want to get rid of them, there's always EBay.
Howard Zane hon30critter: Howard You don't have to invite people to see your layout in order to garner outrageous comments. Take a look at this. CNJ831 seems to be telling us that this whole forum is a waste of time and that we have nothing to offer. I respecfully disagree! http://cs.trains.com/TRCCS/forums/t/188187.aspx Dave Sometimes folks have a tendency the shift their mouths before engaging their brains. I do not know this fellow, but I have read many of his posts. Many are helpful and astute comments....but the real issue is if he thinks this forum is a waste of time, why does he spend so much of his time on it? I concur with you empahtically as this forum is anything, but a waste of time. I'm not an entry level modeler, but still I have fielded many useful tips. HZ
hon30critter: Howard You don't have to invite people to see your layout in order to garner outrageous comments. Take a look at this. CNJ831 seems to be telling us that this whole forum is a waste of time and that we have nothing to offer. I respecfully disagree! http://cs.trains.com/TRCCS/forums/t/188187.aspx Dave
Howard
You don't have to invite people to see your layout in order to garner outrageous comments. Take a look at this.
CNJ831 seems to be telling us that this whole forum is a waste of time and that we have nothing to offer. I respecfully disagree!
http://cs.trains.com/TRCCS/forums/t/188187.aspx
Dave
I concur with you empahtically as this forum is anything, but a waste of time. I'm not an entry level modeler, but still I have fielded many useful tips.
I'm going to stick my neck out here because I think some of you guys are being just a little unfair to CNJ831. Or at least have assumed a negative interpretation of his comments. I interpreted what he said relating to building craftsman kits was that there is some excellent information currently on the forum he mentioned - how can you disagree with that. Currently I see an absence from this forum of some of the guys I used to see here who do spend a lot of time scratch building and building craftsman's kits.
I also believe that this forum attracts the comments of predominately modellers who buy RTR or do so now in the absence of kits of the type they used to build. In any event, I don't believe CNJ831 said that this forum is a waste of time in it's entirety - he spends a lot of time here to believe that. I always learn something new from his posts and the posts of many others here as well. No, I think he was referring with some disappointment that perhaps what is often described these days as Old School modeling is rapidly becoming a thing of the past and we mostly all morn that.
The hobby of model Railroading is not so small that there isn't room for everybody.
Great thread! I also ballroom dancer for a hobby but chicks dig that.
My (now) fiancee, who I met ballroom dancing, wants an N-scale Pennsy steamer for when she gets her hands on my N-scale roundy-round. I figure that's ok as long as she leaves my HO shelf switcher alone - she wants to graffiti all my boxcars. And she actually bought me a covered hopper when she was on a business trip, so I think I'm doing ok this time around...
steemtrayn While viewing layouts at the WGH show today, my girlfriend saw a highway bridge that crossed over the tracks and abruptly ended at layout's edge. She asked "Why did they build a bridge that goes nowhere?"
While viewing layouts at the WGH show today, my girlfriend saw a highway bridge that crossed over the tracks and abruptly ended at layout's edge. She asked "Why did they build a bridge that goes nowhere?"
You shoulda told her it was funded by Congress...
John
fkrall From our 5 year old grandson frustrated by my slow progress moving beyond benchwork and wiring: "I hope you finish this before you die." Rick Krall
From our 5 year old grandson frustrated by my slow progress moving beyond benchwork and wiring:
"I hope you finish this before you die."
Rick Krall
Snappy comeback - "Don't worry. Finished or not, when I die, it's going to your sister."
"We do not quit playing because we grow old; we grow old because we quit playing." ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes
Not really any outrageous. But among the least supportive are around how much time and how much money?
Richard
Hoomi.
Like me living life to the fullest. I dove the Barrier Reef but had a terrible Head cold when I got to Fiji.
I truly believe those who constantly think about and fear death are the ones who have never truly lived.
If you do things in a safe manner with precautions taken why not live life to its fullest.
Brent
"All of the world's problems are the result of the difference between how we think and how the world works."
hcc25rl Stupid is as Stupid does. Jimmy
Stupid is as Stupid does.
Jimmy
Yeah. Can you believe people are still so stupid as to believe sharks are mindless eating machines, and to be irrationally feared?
Deaths due to railroad accidents in 2007 (U.S. only): 851
Deaths due to shark attack in 2007 (Worldwide): 1
Doggone, I'm safer around sharks than I am around trains! Good thing I don't let fear rule my life!
G.Paine.
Hold the phone! Forget the thread. This is magnificent work. Kudos!
Mike
ROUTE ROCK!
"You play with toy trains?!?"
"Yeah, well, I can't go diving with sharks ALL the time..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTCqyLwRzAA
(Yes, that is my video. I'm ready to go back, if I could just afford it...)
"No, I operate a scale railroad empire; I play with dissatisfied wives."
best reply I've seen so far!
I don’t get many comments about my layout as not many have actually seen it, though many know I have one. I however, do not get upset at anything others say about my hobby though. Usually I refer to me going home to or having “play with my choo choo trains” I like it and it don’t bother me one bit how they feel about it. Most don't seem to grasp at first, just how long it takes to build one. "You still working on that?" or "It's not done yet? How long you been working on that?" I have responded as Wolfgang has to the very occasional comment. I live in a somewhat small town and most I talk too know or if they don’t, don’t care or, think they are neat but don’t have the time. (I take that as a trying to be nice and an attempt at being polite.) My favorite is from the ones who make the “haven’t you grown up” or “silly waste of time” type comments while wearing almost the entire uniform from their favorite sports team or NASCAR racer and spouting statistics. To which I smile and respond, “and what constructive use is that?” A blank look usually ensues. I got used to that years ago from the new people moving in to town. I often wear a Cowboy hat for obvious reasons if you've ever worn one, and some ask "You a Cowboy?" To which I respond...."No, do you play/drive for (insert team shown on their outfits they usually wearing)?" Don't get me wrong, I have no objection to whatever a person does that they enjoy. What I don’t understand are those who feel the need to inflict their views on others, regardless of their hobby, as if we are wrong and really bothering them by locking ourselves in a room and staying out of their view of the TV they are yelling at as if the people can hear them. Odd.
I don’t get many comments about my layout as not many have actually seen it, though many know I have one. I however, do not get upset at anything others say about my hobby though. Usually I refer to me going home to or having “play with my choo choo trains” I like it and it don’t bother me one bit how they feel about it.
Most don't seem to grasp at first, just how long it takes to build one. "You still working on that?" or "It's not done yet? How long you been working on that?"
I have responded as Wolfgang has to the very occasional comment. I live in a somewhat small town and most I talk too know or if they don’t, don’t care or, think they are neat but don’t have the time. (I take that as a trying to be nice and an attempt at being polite.)
My favorite is from the ones who make the “haven’t you grown up” or “silly waste of time” type comments while wearing almost the entire uniform from their favorite sports team or NASCAR racer and spouting statistics. To which I smile and respond, “and what constructive use is that?” A blank look usually ensues. I got used to that years ago from the new people moving in to town. I often wear a Cowboy hat for obvious reasons if you've ever worn one, and some ask "You a Cowboy?" To which I respond...."No, do you play/drive for (insert team shown on their outfits they usually wearing)?"
Don't get me wrong, I have no objection to whatever a person does that they enjoy. What I don’t understand are those who feel the need to inflict their views on others, regardless of their hobby, as if we are wrong and really bothering them by locking ourselves in a room and staying out of their view of the TV they are yelling at as if the people can hear them. Odd.
Todd
Central Illinoyz
In order to keep my position as Master and Supreme Ruler of the House, I don't argue with my wife.
I'm a small town boy. A product of two people from even smaller towns. I don’t talk on topic….. I just talk.
Sometimes folks have a tendency the shift their mouths before engaging their brains. I do not know this fellow, but I have read many of his posts. Many are helpful and astute comments....but the real issue is if he thinks this forum is a waste of time, why does he spend so much of his time on it?
To give the devil his due, so to speak, from the photos I've seen posted here, CNJ831 does some exquisite work, and we can all learn a lot from him.
Unfortunately, he's also from the "You're not REAL model railroader if...." school of thought, and it's his way or no way, in his eyes, at least.
Connecticut Valley Railroad A Branch of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford
"If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right." -- Henry Ford
I don't know or run into a lot of idiots, but the one question I get more than any other, the one issue that seems to fascinate most everyone, is: "How much does this stuff cost?" or words to that effect.
My answer is usually, "A lot more than my ex-wife thinks."
The St. Francis Consolidated Railroad of the Colorado Rockies
Denver, Colorado
Ibflattop I think it would be time to say,"Gooooooood Bye"
I think it would be time to say,"Gooooooood Bye"
Why not also ask what manly thing they do for a hobby or to relax?
Most likely many will have nothing other then watching television and drinking.
Ken G Price My N-Scale Layout
Digitrax Super Empire Builder Radio System. South Valley Texas Railroad. SVTRR
N-Scale out west. 1996-1998 or so! UP, SP, Missouri Pacific, C&NW.
My uncle was once telling me about how a single diesel engine had 20,000HP. I tried telling him different, but he's a bit stubborn, so we ended up with a sort of compromise at the end. We "agreed" that maybe it was 20,000HP of traction, but I was actually just trying to end that conversation and move on.
So far, I've never had anyone think I was weird for model railroading, and I haven't gotten any dumb comments on my still unfinished layout. So far.
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hon30critter Howard You don't have to invite people to see your layout in order to garner outrageous comments. Take a look at this. CNJ831 seems to be telling us that this whole forum is a waste of time and that we have nothing to offer. I respecfully disagree! http://cs.trains.com/TRCCS/forums/t/188187.aspx Dave
I'm a Howard Zane fan and based on one of his references to his own railroad in an Allen Keller video, I started referring to my 24 X 25 foot layout as my "toy train set". During a family visit, I asked my 85 year old uncle and my few cousins if they'd like to see my "toy train set". My uncle was clearly not that interested. However, when I ran a Susquehanna train by him his eyes lit up and he got a big smile on his face. His father, my grandfather, worked for the Susquehanna. Same effect when I ran an Erie train by him that his late twin brother had worked for.
Sort of a reverse twist on the thread's theme.
Mark
ef3 yellowjacket Bruce; IN the words of the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield: "Ooh death; where is thy sting?"
Bruce;
IN the words of the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield:
"Ooh death; where is thy sting?"
In musings and other things pre-dating those of Danger Rodneyfield, not by much though, the following appears in Corinthians:
54 So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. 55 O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? 56 The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.
And from the RAF airmans song of WWII: