Probably Best I Didn't Admit I Am a Model Railroader

Lee, I think you should have come clean, maybe they'd have given you the top out of pity!

 

You could have said the hair products were for you!!!!

Would it have been easier for you if you went to the store wearing a pair of bib jean overalls, kerchief, and an engineers hat carrying the target locomotive in your hands?

 

 That was probably the smartest answer under the circumstances Lee. Still, please rest assured that many of us here in the forum would have helped to get you released from whatever facility you may have been taken to. Some of us would even participate in the escape committee/rescue team too. 

Sweating the details Lee?

LOL...Very funny!

Lee what's the matter with you man? Modifying and bashing something so you can have a model and/or roadname not commercially available. You know darn well forum tradition dictates that you're supposed to first come here and whine and complain that Lionel/MTH/Atlas doesn't make some model or roadname that you want and that if they do a headlight sits a scale inch too low or the black isn't the same black such and such road painted theirs.

Still, keep us informed on the progress, I've always found your work interesting and some what inspirational and it may actually motivate me to get back into modifying things like I used to do before life began interfering with my hobby! I have a whole box of half finished projects that I keep saying I'm going to finish.

 

Jerry

Reminds me of the time I went to Rite-aid looking for the perfect red and green nail polish to re coat some switch indicator bulbs.
Kept asking for something more red  and less pink.
I finally found a bright red that did not wash out when lit.
She must of thought I was a little weird.

I meant to mention that . . . . I went to Lionel's website, and also MTH's, and Bachmann's, and I was shocked - SHOCKED I tell you -  that none had a Replacement Sand-Dome section.  What is the world coming to when you can't count of a major manufacturer to devote a portion of its website and product line to a sub-sub-sub-niche of spare parts that service the needs of a critically important sub-segment of the model railroading hobby - namely me!  They should know that my needs and my opinion count a lot more than anything else including their actually making a profit.  While I am at it, I should also add that I have no doubt that the Chinese are to blame for this . . . . . 

 

You did the right thing. 

I am surprised on how many items I need for a hobby project on on shelves at a hardware, department, drug or other retail outlet.  I admit that I am a model railroader on purpose, just to see the expression on their face.  All you need is your imagination.

 

Steve, Lady and Tex

I don't know about that.  I think it's more likely the manager would have picked up a bottle and sprayed Lee with it.   Of course, if it was Rogaine, it might be beneficial (I can say that.....take a look at my picture!)

Brilliant post. Loved it!

that was a quik thinking very ingenious answer!!

Ive made that response before,

looking for something for my wife but cant remember

what it was, Ill know it when I see it.

(but I was telling the truth).

Or somebody asks me, what are you looking for??

My wife!, I tell them, shes in the store but I cant find her.

Funny, funny, funny.

Might be time to invest in a lathe....

Good answer!

 

 

At least you weren't in need of some elastic and were caught rummaging through the ladies uh, under things at the Dollar General!  LOL

Lee, by the powers invested in me (a licensed model railroad curmudgeon) and on behalf of all model railroad curmudgeons everywhere, I grant you absolution for your little white lie in the service of model railroaders. 

 

Well done, my friend! 

 

George

Lee, if it's any consolation, then I'm a model railroader too, though many here would take issue with that conclusion. When I first got back into the hobby, it was the HO guys that gave me a lot of complliments telling me they'd "never seen a Lionel guy do so much kitbashing and repainting. What a refreshing change."

 

I've been repainting, kitbashing and scrachbuilding the entire time I've been back in the hobby... almost 25 years now. And yes, with 027/semi-scale trains on 027 track.... Gasp! The vast majority of my stuff is repainted. I've got the short Lionel and K-Line gondolas in CSX (reg. and MOW schemes), Conrail, BNSF (round and swoosh logos), NS (reg. and MOW schemes), Lehigh Valley, Penn Central, New Haven, CP Rail and more.

 

I now have a method of re-inforcing the tabs on the Lionel log/coal dump cars. But before I figured that fix out, I kitbashed them into replicas of TOFC cars. They look great and people at shows always ask "who makes those?" I'm not so concerned with exact prototypical appearance as I am in making a representation.

 

Speaking of the women's department, those black hair rollers spray painted with black, silver and rust colors make a pretty convincing industrial gondola load.

Thinking you would have made all the evening newscasts had you offered to buy the items for a female customer and told her you "just want to keep the caps"

Would your wife try to augment her hairdo at Trainworld?

"I'm thinking of a bouffant style and need something to hold it in place. Do you carry lock-ons?"

 

LOLOLOL

 

 

I can relate.

I needed to buy a bottle of metallic green nail polish to paint telephone pole insulators.   Fortunately, I took my 22 YO daughter along to avoid any embarassing questions.   It doubled my cost, however, as I had to buy her silence with another bottle in her color.

Bob

Imagine if you had taken the actual Lionchief+ with you into the CVS and people saw you popping tops off ladies cosmetics and trying to place them on your choo-choo. I suspect the manager would have evacuated everyone from the building and locked you inside. "Crazy dude on aisle 5"

 

Mack

Well played, sir, well played.

 

I made the poor choice of explaining once (only once mind you) that I need the item to make something unrelated to it purpose -- the look of pure horror and terror on the gals face as kept me on the straight and narrow ever since. She looked as if I said I planed to use real human skin for the passengers, and her's was lovely....

 

 

I know how it feels Lee. I'm a school custodian in a K-6 elementary school, last week I got my picture taken and interviewed by the student TV crew as the staff employee of the day, one of the questions I got asked was what did I have for a hobby. I told them I was into O Gauge Toy Trains and in the process of rebuilding my layout. Sure enough it gets broadcast to all the classrooms the next morning during announcements.  Now half the students think I'm the cool janitor and the other half think I'm the coo-coo janitor that plays with trains. Let them think what they want, we got the coolest hobby there is!

I was looking at using chalks for weathering, so rather than suffer the wrath of the "Department of the Interior" by stealing hers, I stopped by a beauty supply place to look at their better make-up brushes. They gave me some odd looks when I was checking the coverage of the different sizes against a box car. They'd never heard of make-up brushes used for that purpose.

 

Unfortunately, my haul from the beauty supply was immediately confiscated by the Department of the Interior. That's what I get for buying the "good stuff."

 

The other classic is the use of pantyhose to protect rear deck car stereo speakers "back in the day." You cover the cone with the hose and it keeps out dust.

I can't understand caring what anyone at CVS thinks.

 

I must admit that I am biased since CVS tore down 10 homes and many trees directly adjacent to our residential neighborhood in order to build their store and parking lot.     

I've found "I'm building props for a movie" gets me out of having to explain all the unrelated parts I buy at the hardware store.

I'm very outgoing.I do contracting  as a co bussines so I am in H.Depot a lot.When ever I see a person buying a bag of Durabond or plaster and has a broken up sheet of styrofoam,I always ask"are you a train guy?"I hit it right most of the time LOL.Nick

I took some advice on here and shopped for wedding veil gauze for fencing and got

weird looks.  I usually go to stores I don't commonly frequent if I think what I am

after will seem "strange".  Other times I just feel that they are there to sell, and

it is none of their business.  I don't give explanations.

Just for future reference, the dollar store (actual one-dollar-per-item places, Dollar Tree, Dollar Zone...) has a ton of spray bottles and such. They also have dollar packs of makeup brushes that aren't likely to be confiscated, tulle in various colors, sanding sticks with seven or eight different grits (nail care), nail polish in a variety of colors ranging from red signal to "what the heck is that?" various packages of  snap-top containers that can contain roving parts...plus, toward Christmastime, several chains carry Christmas resin figures that are O-scale or close enough for tree use.

 

--Becky

But that's the fun of it, having a project and you can't find the parts at the dealer and 

finding something else with a little work that will work as well or better cant's wait 

to see the finished train.

 

Tin 

Absolutely, there is nothing I love as much as turning a Pringles tube into a silo or cutting up the top of a spray bottle to make a sand dome or . . . who knows what is next!!  For example, and for future reference should it come up: one of my all time favorites, a Glide dental floss container, with the cracks suitably filled, primed and painted, makes a perfect sleeper compartment to add to a model 1:48 tractor trailer. 

I hope the store manager is not a member and reading these posts. Lol

Glenn

Ive gone up and down the grocery isle and chcked out different shaped tin cans for particular projects.

   Funny story Lee.  I've got boxes and drawers of junk I've saved that sort of looks like some future project's part in my mind I might make some day.  I can see my kids, after my demise, saying "what the heck was he saving this for?".

.....

Dennis

I think I would have told the truth, though of course in slightly condensed terms, for a number of reasons:

 

 1)  You go to the cash register, and find that manager is there, filling in while the usual cashier is on break.  Now what, if anything, do you say ?

 

 2)  Sometimes they're glad to help.  Though it's more likely to happen in a department or similar store, it's not unknown for a manager to reappear from the back rooms with some outdated samples etc and ask "Can you use these ?"

 

 3)  The " It could REALLY come back to bite you " risk:  You and your wife are in CVS again, and that manager, just to be friendly, asks your wife WHILE YOU ARE IN ANOTHER AISLE "Did he ever find the perfume you asked him to get ?" ...

 

  Disclaimer:  My girlfriend would say there's a fourth reason:  I can flirt with the manager.  However, my gf believes I have only two criteria for flirting with someone:

A)  Must be female

B)  Must not be dead

   However, she's not sure about B) after I told her that years [ and years ! ] ago I was on a few dates where I thought the gal was dead.....

 

Best regards, SZ

When I built a speaker enclosure for my ERR conversion of an MTH F-3, I use two cans of tomato paste connected together, end to end. Had to look to find the right sized cans in steel instead of aluminum.

Lee - that must have been a stretch for you.  You have model railroading coursing through your veins and seeping out the pores of your skin non stop.  I applaud you on your discretion.  Very funny.  Keep on going.  You are an O Gauge modeling machine.  Cheers.