One of the older, fifth graders who lives in a house on the walk home from school found out that I've taken an interest in Lionel Trains. He's planning to buy one of those new Schwinn 20" bikes with the banana seats and the "high" handle bars, and needs to raise some cash. He asked me to come over later to see if I wanted to buy any of his Lionel "stuff".
I rode my bike over before supper to take a look. The prices were very reasonable, but he has repainted most of the cars, and his steam engine, in these garish colors that look like something from the Munster's TV Show. I told him the trains looked pretty swell, and, that he had perfected his spray painting techniques, but the trains didn't really match my rolling stock. (Maybe if my sister had one of those girly Lionel sets in pastel colors, she might like these rainbow repaints.)
I think I'll save my painting for the AMT model car kits that I love to build, and leave my trains their original colors. That way when I'm much, much older, like in my 30's, the trains will still (hopefully) look nice.
My Uncle Bob built a giant Lionel layout in the basement of their sprawling mid 50's era ranch house. The layout is primarily in one large room, but traverses through different parts of the basement on a two track mainline, with lift bridges, signals and lots of lights. It's so cool, and I love to go over there and run the trains!
My cousin likes the trains, but since his dad started building the layout with a first train set on his second birthday, my dad thinks the layout is really my uncle's hobby. At holiday dinners, some of the adult relatives occasionally joke that men Bob's age shouldn't really be playing with trains, but since the train is nominally my cousin's, my Uncle Bob is able to get away with what is really HIS hobby.
