Model Railroaders: Interesting People

It is my belief Arnold, that we all subscribe to your motto. Collectively, it’s a group of folks who are imaginative, collegial, and willing to share. I have yet to meet anyone in the hobby who is snobbish.

Interesting topic. I have noticed some similarities among model railroaders. Myself, I collect Hot Wheels, Dinky’s, love the Beatles, own a couple classic full size cars, and Lionel trains. I’ve noticed a lot of MR’s own a classic car or two as well.

joel

I know several model railroaders who are also musicians.  While I am no professional, I started playing brass in the 4th grade and progressed through various instruments through college.  My claim to fame is that I played bass guitar in a band that opened for America in 2003.  I still play guitar, bass, keys, and drums on a fairly regular basis and occasionally do the one off gig when needed, but family and career really slowed that down 15 years ago.

However, I do practice the drums every night.  My wife loves me enough that she got me an electronic set of drums and I mixed them with my acoustic drums.  Perhaps I have that backwards and the electronic drums were for her.    My influences are mainly progressive rock acts like King Crimson, early Genesis, Yes, and Rush so polyrhythmic beats and odd time signatures with a healthy dose of double bass pedaling is therapeutic for me.  Music is a part of my soul and I have nearly 400 CDs and several hundred records including some rare bootlegs and the first US pressing of Jimmy Hendrix's "Are you Experienced".  I still love live rock shows and will be seeing the incredibly talented if not a bit odd band "Primus" a week from today live and a more modern prog band "Dream Theater" in support of their latest release in February since they postponed this week's show due to COVID.  Sigh ...

Does that make me interesting?  Probably not.  Just more nerdy.  I have other hobbies that are a combination of art and science like large format photography with a view camera, but again life has forced my photography to the terrible cell phone "selfie" type shots I post here more recently.   

What I find is that all my interests as well as my chosen career are left brain / right brain required endeavors.  The right amount of technical mixed with the right amount of artistic.  I think a lot of us on this forum share that trait.   

As they say Iam.the last one to let you down. My hobby is my therapy. I have been in funeral service for 46 years and as my wife says have a ton of stories and should be on my third book.

Arnold, my train friends seem to be very diverse from a world famous eye surgeon that likes "Z' scale, a Catholic Priest that likes Marklin and Lionel (like myself), a beer and wine importer that likes Marklin HO and 0, and more. They have all been great people, good friends, and possess a shared love of trains.

OMG, didn't you just open up Pandora's Box. 

Nope, I'm not going there - no way, no how.  I have a bunch of observations, all guaranteed to get this thread killed.

So I'll just laugh and keep them to myself.   

George

I was surprised to learn what an avid model railroader Rod Stewart is.

Hot rods, race boats, home improvement, ignoring P.I.T.A. people.

When West Side Joe mentioned Rod Stewart, I immediately thought of Neil Young.

Another quality many of us have in common is to dare to be different and not to be deterred by others who think we are crazy.

I became very mindful of this when I mentioned to others years ago that I write songs. When you tell people that, many will think you can't possibly be any good at it and that you're crazy for even attempting it.

IMO, it is a more socially acceptable to say you do model railroading, than it is to say you write songs, as a hobby, at least where I live in the NY area. (It may be different in Nashville where I'm told that  almost everyone claims to be a songwriter).

"I'm a master model railroader (in my imagination) and songwriter to boot;                Some people think I'm crazy, but I don't give a hoot."

LOL, Arnold

Looks like I am a bit different than the rest.  I'm not a collector of anything and no desire to be, I am not artistic, could not tell you who sung a song I have heard a 100 times, don't watch TV except when I am on a trainer, and while I loved visiting my brother (Marx) and father-in-law (PW Lionel) and running their trains with them, their loop running was very boring to me.  For fun, I basically lived outdoors (biking, running, swimming, kayaking, skiing (both type), sailing, and racing a lot of them).  For work, I was a military officer then civil service doing program management (and, as a pilot, doing some flying).  NOTE: I am retired and don't race anymore.

I did not get fully interested in model trains until command control became available and I visited some "operations" oriented layouts, both O scale as well as other scales.  I liked working a train.  I like randomly picking a car (boxcar, flatcar, whatever) and engine (switcher, road engine, again whatever) and trying to figure out how to move that car with that engine to a siding in the least number of moves.  My plywood layout is currently full of track and little scenery.  Probably a result of my engineering training and skipping my humanities classes.

I do enjoy being around train folks like those on this forum, and setting up and running trains with the NCT (haven't in a while, though).  I do be careful on what I say when at a meet or an operations session.  At one operations session I thought things went well but I made the mistake of saying that I ride bikes a lot (bicycle, not motorcycle) and I was never invited back.

I am going to York for primarily one purpose: buy more Ross switches.

Now you know.

@Tranquil Hollow RR posted:

It is my belief Arnold, that we all subscribe to your motto. Collectively, it’s a group of folks who are imaginative, collegial, and willing to share. I have yet to meet anyone in the hobby who is snobbish.

Unfortunately I have met 1 or 2 snobbish know it all's....but most are very helpful... 

We are certainly diverse and have some surprising interests!

As many of you know, I have been less active in model railroading the last few years and pursued other interests.

In that time, I have gotten back into painting and sketching, stamp collecting, backyard astronomy, woodcrafts, and even tried chainsaw carving (mostly bears)!!!

Somehow firing up my Stihl and attacking a big log gives a type of release much different from that of scratch building in O scale!

Go figure!

But I will always have my trains - that has been a constant since my high school days!

Jim

The nice way of putting it is that we all have a zest for life. The not so nice way is to say that we are all eccentrics. My hobbies include watching sports, sports memorabilia ( I especially focus on nickname inscription autographs), saving to one day own a Dodge Challenger scatpack/heckcat (it auto censored the actual name) outdoor Christmas decorating, and reading/watching videos on politics, economics, philosophy, and history (currently on Arthur Herman’s Cave and the Light; a history of how Plato & Aristotle influenced philosophy). I used to be a guitarist (hearing issues) and still enjoy listening to all kinds of rock, metal, and the occasional jazz or blues album.  Plus, I’m a weirdo for starting my O scale fascination at 19 years old after not touching a model train (ho) in 5 or ten years.

I used to have an interest in vehicles.  I have owned a '72 SS Malibu, but more interestingly this 1939 Chevy 3/4 ton that was mostly stock.  I gave it up in 2018 after 26 years of owning it as I just wasn't able to keep up with all my hobbies.

I have many interests in addition to trains and am just as comfortable at a Broadway show as I am at a metal concert.   In fact, that's the one thing folks are most surprised to learn about me, even more than my affinity for trains - that my favorite genre of music is metal and I'm a lifelong metalhead. I definitely do not fit that stereotype.

-Greg

In addition to my train habits/addiction, I'm an avid bicyclist, homebrewer and fly fisher... you'd think I could choose some cheaper pursuits  

@Greg Houser posted:

I have many interests in addition to trains and am just as comfortable at a Broadway show as I am at a metal concert.   In fact, that's the one thing folks are most surprised to learn about me, even more than my affinity for trains - that my favorite genre of music is metal and I'm a lifelong metalhead. I definitely do not fit that stereotype.

-Greg

Did you pick up the newest Iron Maiden release from last month?  It is awesome!

@Arnold D. Cribari posted:

Another quality many of us have in common is to dare to be different and not to be deterred by others who think we are crazy.

I became very mindful of this when I mentioned to others years ago that I write songs. When you tell people that, many will think you can't possibly be any good at it and that you're crazy for even attempting it.

IMO, it is a more socially acceptable to say you do model railroading, than it is to say you write songs, as a hobby, at least where I live in the NY area. (It may be different in Nashville where I'm told that  almost everyone claims to be a songwriter).

"I'm a master model railroader (in my imagination) and songwriter to boot;                Some people think I'm crazy, but I don't give a hoot."

LOL, Arnold

Very well stated and I can't agree more.  I have a YouTube channel with some original music I recorded where I wrote the music, the lyrics, sang, and played all the instruments.   They were just sketches of ideas at best and I often spent only three days from conception to final recording of demos.  It was originally started because of a Facebook group that had a weekly theme and was dedicated to artistic endeavors related to that theme.  I don't use Facebook anymore and the group disbanded anyway. 

I also have some demo tapes from prior to getting a digital studio that go back 30 years that have never been transferred to a digital format. 

While I don't embarrass easily, I don't share the channel for some reason.  It is the one area I guess I am self conscious?  If I were to put my train videos onto YouTube, I would start another channel.