There's never time to do it right, but always time to do it over.....
I have no other hobbies.
I have had others in the past, but with my bad back I am lucky to have MRRing.
I have a lot of equipment and stuff in storage from previous/other hobbies. I will never get out of them what I put into them.
I also found there is only so much hobby money to go around and I get more enjoyment out of MRRing than I did the others. SO guess which on won out?
I also tend to start and never finish hobby projects, so I have decided that MRRing willl be my last hobby.
-G .
Just my thoughts, ideas, opinions and experiences. Others may vary.
HO and N Scale.
After long and careful thought, they have convinced me. I have come to the conclusion that they are right. The aliens did it.
Hiking, skiing, reading, jazz (listening/playing/reading about) and messing with my fish - Barracuda, that is:
Sean
HO Scale CSX Modeler
I am a caricature woodcarver. I have been carving for approximately 3 years or so. You can view my work at: http://iowacarver.tripod.com/
Corey
Railroading In Council Bluffs
http://www.rrincb.com/
Visit my caricature carving website:
http://iowacarver.tripod.com/
JLK cats think well of me: I've been an avid cyclist at times, my main bike (and the fourth I've owned in five years) is a 1992 Bridgestone RB-2, racing style bike, that I've added parts too for a couple years. I wear the clothes and I like long rides in the Lancaster county countryside. I'll eventually add bags and other accessories so I can do short bike tours more easily. I've worked to promote cycling a little bit in my area as well as helping people work on their bikes Does the Buck sound Familiar, Or Quarryville?
cats think well of me: I've been an avid cyclist at times, my main bike (and the fourth I've owned in five years) is a 1992 Bridgestone RB-2, racing style bike, that I've added parts too for a couple years. I wear the clothes and I like long rides in the Lancaster county countryside. I'll eventually add bags and other accessories so I can do short bike tours more easily. I've worked to promote cycling a little bit in my area as well as helping people work on their bikes
I've been an avid cyclist at times, my main bike (and the fourth I've owned in five years) is a 1992 Bridgestone RB-2, racing style bike, that I've added parts too for a couple years. I wear the clothes and I like long rides in the Lancaster county countryside. I'll eventually add bags and other accessories so I can do short bike tours more easily. I've worked to promote cycling a little bit in my area as well as helping people work on their bikes
Does the Buck sound Familiar, Or Quarryville?
I've spent much time in Quarryville, but haven't biked there much at all. I've been through the Buck but haven't biked that either. Maybe before the summer's out I'll make some time to do so.
Alvie
Riding my mountain bike on converted railroad right of way that use to exist where I live. Now railtrails. Find many sidings at old companies. Even found a steel end of track bumper abut two miles from where I live. Use to be at siding for a feed and grain distribution company. Tracks been gone since the 1980's.
About ten miles from me is a bridge across the Connecticut river that is now for a railtrail.
The right of way extends about fifteen miles to where a shortline still runs that use to run through our town.
I can easily do forty miles a day but average about twenty five.
One of three railroads that use to exist in my area is still in use. I have to carry my bike across the active tracks to pickup another railtrail. This will become double track for Amtrak in the near future. A pedestran tunnel will be put under the rail line at that time. Many in the town walk cross the tracks at different points where it will will no doubt be fenced in.
Still an old bridge about a half mile from me that will become part of the railtrail in the future.
Rails are still in place.
Nothing fancy. A five year old LL Bean 15 speed bike that was given to me a year ago. GoPro 900 camera for videos and stills. Camera good for sky diving, canopy tours, kayaking. Chest support and helmet support for the camera. Camera has water proof case good to about 60 meters.
Rich
If you ever fall over in public, pick yourself up and say “sorry it’s been a while since I inhabited a body.” And just walk away.
cats think well of me I've been an avid cyclist at times, my main bike (and the fourth I've owned in five years) is a 1992 Bridgestone RB-2, racing style bike, that I've added parts too for a couple years. I wear the clothes and I like long rides in the Lancaster county countryside. I'll eventually add bags and other accessories so I can do short bike tours more easily. I've worked to promote cycling a little bit in my area as well as helping people work on their bikes.
I've been an avid cyclist at times, my main bike (and the fourth I've owned in five years) is a 1992 Bridgestone RB-2, racing style bike, that I've added parts too for a couple years. I wear the clothes and I like long rides in the Lancaster county countryside. I'll eventually add bags and other accessories so I can do short bike tours more easily. I've worked to promote cycling a little bit in my area as well as helping people work on their bikes.
Justin
Motorcycling.
The other half of my basement not filled with trains is filled with motorcycles. Primarily sport bikes (still have my last M/C that I road raced from about 10 years back). On weekends, when I'm not in the basement, you can usually find me up in the mountains carving corners on a motorbike.
Model railroading is my primary interest, but I also pursue (very) amateur astronomy and reading...history and 1930s and 1940s mystery novels.
Well, for me Model railroading has to compete with riding my Polaris 250 trail blazer quad (Model railroading's got to be cheaper. I just had to put new front tires and wheel lugs on it and it needs starter work now. Between parts and gas that my sisters oh so kindly take off of my hands after I fill the quad up.) muddbogging in friends fields, trying to build up a 1990 Jeep XJ for trail use and riding my 1952 Farmall H. Sadly work and the price of gas gets in my way
If you can read this... thank a teacher. If you are reading this in english... thank a veteran
When in doubt. grab a hammer.
If it moves and isn't supposed to, get a hammer
If it doesn't move and is supposed to, get a hammer
If it's broken, get a hammer
If it can't be fixed with a hammer... DUCK TAPE!
Here's my latest painting that I did this afternoon.
Tried a different technique for making grass and trees that Bob Ross used. While there's still room for improvement, it didn't turn out too badly.
Overview of my studio with the latest painting in the easel:
Tools of the trade:
Kevin
http://chatanuga.org/RailPage.html
http://chatanuga.org/WLMR.html
Other hobbies? What's that? Haha just kidding, in addition to the trains, these activities have enhanced my life much.
I love music and though I do not play it much I do love collecting good albums. Except for a large digital collection I really just focus on CDs as that's what I have the capability to play and enjoy these days. I'm acquiring the parts slowly to build up a good stereo that'd fall between mid-fi and hi-fi but not be outrageously expensive. I have a good enough receiver with integrated amp but I dream of a high-power amp and appropriate floor standing loud-speakers one day. I once heard a pair of Vandersteen 2Cs at a friends house and fell in love with them from that point on.
I write poems occasionally, posting them for other writers to read and critique.
I like to get out of town 1-2x a month to go to fun places closeby for a day or two as I find it refreshing to just get out of one's stomping grounds occasionally.
Lastly and definitely not least, I take a lot of photographs throughout the year wherever I travel and for that I'm quite content with either my Sony point and shoot or even the camera on my phone.
My other hobby is rocket aerial photography. I build and fly custom rockets of various sizes, which carry 35mm film cameras:
http://www.raydunakin.com/Site/Rocket_Aerial_Photos.html
For me: Fishing (bass, pike and panfish). Oh, and always taking the long way to the next fishing spot because, well, if you don't run the boat a lot the engine will get gummed, up, right? While I do use a fly rod sometimes for bass and bluegill, I am hoping to learn trout fishing in some of the great trout waters in northern Michigan next year.
Bicyling. My wife and I ride in the area and like to take trips where there are good biking trails. Part of the enjoyment for me on the rail trails is spotting the remains of the railroads - old spurs and sidings, stations and freight houses, as well as being in the backwoods where the rails ran and the automobiles don't. My model railroad's name, the Rochester and Richmond, is actually inspired by one of our local rail trails here in southeast Michigan.
Sailing (small boat) I have a 1968 Pintail, which is a 14' fiberglass sloop rig.
Skiing (downhill) - this is the only competition for the trains in winter.
I also like to travel to where the steam trains still run. I've ridden and chased Pere Marquette 1225 a few times (and chased SP 4449 during Train Festival a couple of years ago when it was in Michigan). The wife and I have only made one out of town trip (to Cass and the Western Maryland) but I have list that's this long of places yet to visit, from Steamtown to the Cumbres and Toltec.
George V.
TA462 wrote: The Chevy II looks familiar. Do you ever drag it at St. Thomas?
Here is mine, well at least the one that's complete, lol. It's got a 1970 Ram Air 4 455 bored 30 over in it right now. I'm working on a 65 Tempest and a 70 GTO that I hope to have together in a couple years.
We did a few times..it is quite quick!!
I'd like to see how those two you are fixing up will turn out....
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/
Although having an interest in woodworking and photography most of my recent activity has been in procrastination and playing Hearts on the computer!
From the far, far reaches of the wild, wild west I am: rtpoteet
It's interesting how many of us train guys also work on cars and/or trucks, and do woodworking. I'm one of those, too:
Furniture:
Car (I sold it last year) and no, the grass isn't that tall; the car is that low:
And trains:
I've also built a couple of 1/12 scale doll houses, and boats (R/C live steam and wind powered).
Phil, I'm not a rocket scientist; they are my students.
A year ago, after going through a major loss, I started going through what can only be described as a mid-life crisis. Don't worry, I didn't start doing anything radical like changing my looks or buying a sports car or motorcycle that I can't afford. I just came to the conclusion that I needed to do something different with my life, and doing over-the-phone tech support wasn't cutting it anymore.
I was trying to figure out what to do one evening when I was watching a rerun of The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross on our local PBS station. That's when it hit me. All my life, I've loved art, and people have said that my work in the past had been comparable with the paintings that Bob Ross did, even though I had never worked with oil paints before. In the past, I'd thought about taking up painting and selling my work, but I never got around to it. So, I made up a spreadsheet of the pros and cons of both staying with my current career as well as starting a career in painting.
Needless to say, my current career failed miserably, and I made a deadline of this coming Labor Day to have things started in the right direction for getting my new career started.
So, I started doing pricing of supplies, bought a digital camera (which is already saving me a ton in film processing and film costs), and began a major cleanup of my basement to not only clean up the layout from all of the work over the past few years but to clear an area of the basement for my new studio. Initially I'd started planning a website for my new career, but I then decided that it would be best to get started with the painting so that when the website is launched, I'll have something to show for it.
I then began getting painting supplies, including an easel like Bob Ross used on his show. I also got some instructional DVDs that he made to study his techniques.
When the canvases came in back in April, I was really psyched up to do my first painting, even though I had to get up at 8AM the following morning to make an hour drive up to my parents' house. By the time dinner was over and dishes were washed, it was 10PM. Even though I needed to begin getting around for bed, I decided to paint, thinking that I could whip up a quick painting and take pictures of it for my parents to see the next day.
I wish I could say that my first attempt was a success. It wasn't. On the show, Bob Ross always said to use a thin even coat of the Liquid White as a basecoat. In my rush to do my first painting, I coated the canvas with it like I was painting a wall. The mountain highlights wanted to smear instead of stick and break. When attempting the shadow color on the mountain, it began to stick and break, and then the whole patches of paint began to slide.
I ended up giving up for the night rather than get frustrated with it. I cleaned things up and chalked it up as a learning experience. It ended up taking about seven weeks for that first attempt to dry.
My second attempt went much better, although I still had problems on the mountain. I later realized that I was leaving too much of the basecolor on the canvas, which was causing the highlights to not want to stick. After fighting with the mountain for so long, I ended up rushing the rest of the painting, which left room for needed improvement, but it wasn't too bad for my first full landscape painting.
My next painting was done with a certified Bob Ross instructor who came out to my home. While we were following the instructions for a painting from one of the shows ("Distant Mountains"), I only took one glance at the painting before doing mine as I wanted to follow the instructor's instructions and go with what was in my mind and not copy Bob Ross' painting.
While there was still room for improvement, this one went much smoother than the last one I'd done. The trees and brush were more well formed, and the mountain turned out better too.
The latest painting I did was based on the show "Golden Rays of Sunlight" that Bob Ross did with the three colors of gessos and then colored it with oil colors. While I went through a little of a learning curve since I hadn't used the gessos before, I thought this one turned out really well, especially the effect of the sun coming through the trees.
While I've got a ways to go yet before I actually start selling paintings, it's a fun hobby for now. I'm hoping that in time it will bring in some extra cash and then hopefully allow me to go to part time at my job and then eventually quit my job. A couple friends have already expressed interest in getting paintings from me as well as my optometrist. Several coworkers have been quite encouraging of my work as well. In July, I took my paintings with me to our family's annual reunion to show, and everybody was amazed that I've only been painting since April. The husband of one of my many cousins is an art teacher and said that I have a gift. Everybody there agrees with me that I need to do what is right for me and what makes me happy.
i am a big time sailor. Thankfully the season is short here in Oregon so I have time to play with my trains
When I'm not modeling, I enjoy camping, computer building and programing and cruzin' in my '84 Corvette
Bob Berger, C.O.O. N-ovation & Northwestern R.R. My patio layout....SEE IT HERE
There's no place like ~/ ;)
markpierce Boating! My Carquinez Coot, sail-assisted cruiser: Ocean cruising on a cruise ship: Visiting interesting places:
Boating! My Carquinez Coot, sail-assisted cruiser:
Ocean cruising on a cruise ship:
Visiting interesting places:
Mark:
You DO know that the Swiss created the Alps just so they'd have a place to run their trains, don't you, LOL?
Tom
Tom View my layout photos! http://s299.photobucket.com/albums/mm310/TWhite-014/Rio%20Grande%20Yuba%20River%20Sub One can NEVER have too many Articulateds!
Besides building my current Home layout
I am a member of an Operations Group that visit other Model Railroads and have an Operations Session monthly.
Collecting & Rebuilding 1960's era Cub Cadet Tractors
Collecting M&M candy dispensers
Spending time with my 2 Sons and all my Grandchildren!
Practicing my Retirement EVERYDAY ! (IF I fail at this - I will have to go back to WORK)! ;-(
BOB H - Clarion, PA
Some general outdoors stuff: Camping / Hiking, Golf.
Some general construction / bulding stuff: Woodworking and volunteering my time to restore old trains
Some "brain power" stuff: mostly strategy games, everything from chess, through cardboard war games (Avalon Hill and similar), and good computer simulations.
Now ask me what I actually have TIME for....
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
Ham radio
Muscle Cars
Astronomy
Cabinet Making
Customizing my truck
Biking
Jogging
Weight Training
Watching the Phillies and Eagles
51% share holder in the ME&O ( Wife owns the other 49% )
ME&O
I love a good western novel by Terry C.Johnson,Ralph Compton,Ralph Cotton,Max Brand ,William Johnstone and several others..
I like reading about the great plain Indian war chiefs and the fierce battles they fought..
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
Making movies.
But I managed to get my movie booked in my N scale movie house...
Cool looking model jet.
I enjoy reading all your guys interest's from Classic movies to Classic novels. From Baseball to Gardening from Biking to Board games ( which I agree about the avalon hill games, I have every axis and allies made ) I very much enjoy model railroading but also like taking a break and stepping away for time. I guess its like that with anything in life though right? Imagine being the guy that gets to test drive ferrari's as they leave the shops in maranello Italy, he must think from time to time this is boring well maybe thats not the best example of something that can de done all the time and not get boring,lol