I've had trains my whole life. My wife knew that when we got married. So, when our grandson was born six years ago, I started building a layout for him (and the two more grandkids that followed). It really pulled the kids into the hobby. And, my wife absolutely adores the grandkids, so it makes for a good time in the basement with the trains. I have great pics and videos of my wife and the grandkids running the trains together. The key is to finding ways to involve the family. I guess I'm lucky. But, let's put it in perspective. My other hobby is vintage car racing which costs way more than trains. She doesn't complain about either but probably wishes I would give up the racing. At age 66 now, I'll likely retire from the racing before too long.
"and yet my dad was a nascar fan and spider man fan had spiderman decals all over his truck and my stepmom has a cabnet full of Santa dolls"
We do not get to choose our parents. Hopefully someday when they are no longer being abusive or you are completely independent, you can find some compassion for them. They sound like folks who are lacking in both insight and kindness, perhaps because they themselves were badly treated as children. It is a sad fact that many people have to seek outside their immediate family for kindness and understanding. May you find these benefits in others.
@paigetrain posted:i'm still single and looking so i don't have this issue yet with a wife or gf.
but i want to know why my PARENTS hate my trains
yes my trains are a special interest along with NERF guns and Shailene Woodley and my parents hate trains and i was never allowed access at home.
Then i had a teacher who knew about autism and said taking away my trains and Nerf stuff was wrong and inhumane
she and another teacher tried to help me build a small HO layout in her room until my dad found out and told the principal to shut down all my train access
than my parents called me a baby because i had a train at school
and yet my dad was a nascar fan and spider man fan had spiderman decals all over his truck and my stepmom has a cabnet full of Santa dolls
and my whole family was against my special interests and i was like the black sheep of the family
i still have trauma from when my dad destroyed a 1500 dollar locomotive i got for christmas in 2007 from a friend
i'm always afraid its gonna happen again
Hey Cody, Maybe consider checking around for a local train club or round robin group of fellow train enthusiasts.
In what part of the country do you live?
There is little chance that self centered or abusive people would change.
@dorfj2 posted:Hey Mat - Congratulations 👏👍🏼
Thank you!!! We're over the moon excited!
@Greg Houser posted:I can't believe you actually admitted as much publically. The Feds should soon be breaking down your door. Shame on you! Women are people too!
-Greg
Good one! Whatever makes me happy and keeps me quiet I suppose. I haven’t went to a train show in several years but I do go with her to fabric stores. I play with trains in the basement and she will sew. Whether a wife likes or dislikes a hobby, the thought of that kind of rage makes me think either you’re spending more than you can afford, money or time, or you need to run.
My wife is supportive of my hobby, but sometimes get frustrated with how much space storing my collection of scale O trains takes. We are between permanent houses and one of the items for the next one is space for a permanent layout and storage of the trains. Since all relationships take two, her interest in a pool and associated pool room is also a requirement for our next home. Give and take.
On a positive note, she really liked the standard gauge train I ran around the Christmas tree last year and I have the greenlight to do so again this year. I even got permission to purchase a locomotive for my small standard gauge collection as I had to borrow one from a friend last year.
How does this topic help the hobby? The title alone is negative and some of the responses here ... well, what can I say. I am especially concerned about the post by "paigetrain". Very sad indeed. We should be concentrating on how to find ways to involve our friends and family. Yet, I am willing to bet that this thread will receive tons of responses while others will be mostly ignored.
I was so richly blessed!!! My wife (d. 2016) had so many admirable gifts, yet she had little interest in anything related to transport, least of all, model trains. Appreciating how much I enjoyed trains, she had tolerated my 15 by 11 foot permanent layout (pictured here) since 1989 in her “family room” which is our actual “living” room. Our equally sized living room still functions as a mini concert hall. It contains a 
7 foot Grand Piano and a real Pipe Organ with its pipe chamber on the second floor.
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Sadly, I must agree that this question unfortunately exists in too many marital relationships. I suppose it's just another example of human INtolerance that permeates entire societies...such as ours?
Been lingering for years, too. The following was clipped from a 50 year old magazine...
Although this sort of animosity towards the hobby was unfortunately part of my first marriage...24 years, 364 days...I'm happy to say that I have been blessed with a WHOLLY supportive spouse now for the past 24 years.
In fact, as I've related several times on this forum, she was 'hooked' (I was already smitten!
) on our first date when, in sharing each others' interests I cautiously mentioned (she says "mumbled") about the trains. Her eyes grew wide and the remainder of the date was mostly about...trains! Talk about epiphanies!!! As if in confirmation, she was a door prize winner (Lionel Winter Wonderland set) at our first York meet about 20 years ago. And she's out-spent me several times at several shows/meets since then. In fact, it's really fun to step aside and observe a seller in discussion with her regarding a fair selling price...and the specific minutiae...for an item!
It has been quite an experience, a WONDERFUL experience, having a wife in full support/participation in the hobby. I highly recommend it. It has been and continues to be, indeed, a special blessing among many through the so-called golden years!!
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When my wife told me that I wanted to move from our former home the only request I had was for a ranch home with a full basement. Her requests are few and very reasonable, so we moved.
When real estate people would call with an available home she simply asked if it was a ranch with a full dry basement and outside entrance. Otherwise she hung up.
During the years in which I did shows for bench work sales she went to most of the shows for support. Never once did she object to purchases.
When her friends see our basement and ask where is her space downstairs she simply says all is well & politely reminds them to mind their own business.
Yes, I know how good I have it, this is not my first rodeo.
My wide also supports my addiction, uuh... I mean hobby.. yea, that's it....Her late father used to put model cars together, her one male cousin had a train in his youth and is still into watching trains. When we first starting dating, I bought her over my place and showed her my collection and ran several trains for her. She was impressed to say the least. For her it is always better trains than alcohol and I've made that my life's mission. You can't get into too much trouble visiting the hobby shop, or can you? I even starting collecting the real stuff, meaning lanterns, crossing bells, and even signal heads. She didn't even freak out when I purchased this large Safetran three aspect signal head from a junk dealer. Yep a nice wife she is.
I will have to respectfully disagree with Alan Arnold. I believe that a topic like this does help the hobby because we’re a family. A family that shares the happy and the sad and supports each other in either case. Though I do agree that the title is quite negative
My wife supports my hobby and has surprised me with rolling stock and other gifts for the layout. Though she hasn’t attended any local train shows she enjoys traveling to attend large scale garden railroad conventions around the US in order to go on the layout tours.
John
My spouse of 50 years, Kay, has been very supportive of my interest in all trains, both model and real, and has attended many train meets and shows, and ridden many steam excursions with me. She knows many of my local train friends, and has financially supported all my many ventures including gauge one live steam over many decades. We even purchased a train depot in Western North Carolina, Bear Creek Junction, which is located on the old right of way of the former Graham County RR. We lived there part time from 1997 until about 2018.
I think a strong community is built by shared position and negative experiences @CA John. The title is a heavy hitter but we have had both sides shared in this thread and I think the discussion has been civil and constructive. Somebody even admitted to converting to HO from O 
I do feel for some of the people in the responses I read but that's all the more reason to participate in the forum. I can give the support they're looking for.
I'm not married but I have found support from a girl I dated and my friends that are girls. They tend to ask about building progress more than the guys I know. The guys seem interested in running the trains but that's it. The girls were fascinated when I explained schedules and operations. Maybe I'm lucky or maybe it's just our age ground (20-30).
This has been a civil and informative thread. THANK YOU, Arnold for allowing it to continue! :-)
@A. Wells posted:What's a "wife"?
Yes, I may have used the wrong word. The definition of wife, "expected to serve her husband, preparing food, clothing and other personal needs", and for some here, "tormenter", does not really fit the woman I married. She is my life partner and friend.
While we do a lot of things together, one area that does make our relationship work is we have hobbies that we can do at the same time; I work on my layout while she enjoys reading novels based on historical events and other cultures. Maybe that is the key. If your significant other does not have something to do while you are playing with your trains, then they may not be happy you are unavailable.
All my wives like all my trains.
My wife has come around a little and she say's she likes the trains?????? Her biggest complaint is what to do with the trains when I die????
I tell her I will take them with Me....I'm 79 and I made a scrap book of all my trains for her to remind her of me when I'm gone. She can sit in the basement and read the book....
My wife Loves the trains ..helps that My Grandson almost 4 LOVES Trains..but she will come down and have a wine..she bought a high top wall table and stools so she can set up and get comfy..gave me the coin for my turntable and has had Input on sections of the layout and is always looking for stuff to use on it
I've had a lot of hobbies over the last 40 or so years and trains (which I started a year ago) are the first one my wife likes. I think it's because she loves our grand children and they all want to come over and run trains with Grampa so she's happy to see them and to see them having a blast in the basement with the old codger. She's not too happy about losing the space previously used for gatherings 3 or 4 times a year, but now we use the space weekly and we run them for hours at a time. She recently told me to stop buying trains and she's probably right, sadly I'm in the addiction phase of this hobby, so it's gonna be hard to stop getting things on my wish list.
My wife likes my trains but we both grew up with family members who worked for the railroad.
If your wife doesn’t like the hobby just ask her why that is. Better than us knuckleheads trying to guess.
My wife seems a little less than supportive.
Scott Smith
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As my more than 75 home pipe organ concerts have begun with a 30 minute layout session in our adjoining “living” room, many hundreds of guests have enjoyed the trains. I am now asked very often “do you still have your trains?’ This thread made me realize it is nearly always the women that ask that question. Go figure!
Hello Mr. Arnold! I will do more for this hobby and re-subscribe to your wonderful publication. A year ago I realized that I'm always just going to be a once a year around the tree guy, and with the demise of MTH...well I lost interest. My primary past time is fishing, but as I get older cold weather is less appealing, so it brings me back to trains earlier. I have a very nice house that I plan to always live in that has no space for a layout, but I have too many trains! There is a 7 year old boy in the neighborhood and I'm going to give him and his Dad a train set. An old conventional Williams Amtrak GG-1 with all the Lionel aluminum passenger cars....no one liked that Lionel E-unit switch in 1989! I spoke with the Dad concerning if he doesn't like it a little to return it, but warned him that it could become a rabbit hole in the good way even for him. Hopefully he doesn't shoot out my front porch lights every Halloween in years to follow!
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Fun topic. When we moved to Vermont and were looking for a place to live, my wife would always ask the realtor if there was a clean, dry basement with the house. She's been supportive, but not into the hobby. Like me and Renaissance Fairs...
Jon 
My wife was supportive early on but as the years went by and the habit got more expensive she got less supportive then when we built our last house and I had a layout out she mellowed out a tiny bit but was still not supportive of the cost. Now in this house she told the builder to make sure we had a big dry basement for my trains. Things have gotten better since she retired and got into sewing more. In the last five years she has spent more on sewing machines/cabinets and stuff to go with them than I have spent on trains(so far). I still kid her that she signed a prenuptial that she can be replaced but not the trains. Unlike Chinatrain99 I wish she had only spent 20K on embroidery machines I think we have spent that much just in the last year.( she is happy doing it and I am supportive of her doing it) Thus makes my train addiction easier for her to support. But still hear about it now and then "you can't run everything you have why buy more".
Scott great pics at least your wife has a sense of humor about it. I bet you have never taken her to met Jim have you?
Trains are not the main issue, but may serve as a lightning rod in an unhappy marriage, because they are obvious. The lesson is: Happy wife = happy life. Mark
My wife pushed me to get my old AF trains out of my parents attic for years. So we finally did that, I opened them all up threw out what I had destroyed as a kid, and neatly packed up the rest and put them in my attic.
About twenty years ago she found a train show nearby, and said lets go check it out, the rest as they say is history.
Now if I could talk her into helping me with some layout painting and scenery...
Aflyer
RJT
I realize 20k is a lowball on just the machines. That doesn’t include a sewing table, accessories, and miles of fabric. It’s something I don’t want to think to hard on to be honest. The thing is, you can buy a train, run it a couple years, sell it and get most of your money back. A used sewing machine with all the technology is worth about as much as a used laptop.
Much has been written about money here, and I so enjoyed my wife’s take on it. I attended train meets or shows at least monthly, and she would ask about them when I returned. I could often share that I saw something I had long been looking for.
“Did you buy it?” she would always ask.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“At the moment, I just wasn’t ready to part with the money.”
“Will you never learn,” she would respond. “By the day after tomorrow you’ll be kicking yourself around the house, and I’d rather not see it.”
I have found that balance, compromise and mutual respect go a long way in keeping my wife happy and agreeable with my interest. I have witnessed too many situations where the hobby has become a "cancer" that slowly takes over a home. I have seen homes filled with pipe organ parts, often not even working, with only paths to get around. I have seen homes with trains in every room, including the bathroom. Like Richard, I, too, have a pipe organ installed in our home. While I have never seen his home in person, only photos, I must admit that Richard's pipe organ installation and train layout are first rate and very tastefully done.
My wife knew about my train and pipe organ interest when we first met. (Our first date was attending a theatre organ concert) When we bought our house we spent quite a bit of time planning on how we were going to use the available space. She graciously allowed me to use a spare room for a train layout. I told her that I would limit my trains to that room and that she could use space beneath the layout for storage of Christmas decorations and other household items. The pipe organ is installed in a chamber that speaks into our living room. Again, all organ parts stay in the chamber. The only organ components in the living room are the console, roll player cabinet and player piano. Everything else must fit in the chamber or It doesn't get installed. She has never really balked at my spending money on trains, organ parts or woodworking equipment.
I was often rightfully accused of having tunnel vision when it came to working on my trains, the organ or out in my wood shop. I would often neglect her and the kids in the name of getting the project finished. I learned to stop and smell the roses. I have found that life is so much more relaxing and she is a lot happier. Now we try to go on short getaways or even short walks when the weather is nice. Having a granddaughter also changed my way of thinking.
I often tell people "My wife is a candidate for Sainthood and I have pictures to prove it!"
Tom
buy her a nice diamond ring and a Rolex and you will never have another problem
Gentlemen, so many points of view. In all honesty often when I’m in the train room I loose track of time. And, I don’t have any track laid yet, it’s all design. As so many have offered, it’s a matter of balance. In turn, my wonderful wife will accompany me to shows and she has an interest as the process moves forward. But I understand that it is important to include her, as with so many other facets of a relationship, I want to be involved in what she is doing and planning. My intent is not to have more trains than I can realistically operate. I want 90% of my equipment to be displayed/run on the layout. Too much equipment and it’s going to be too much about maintenance.
@jim911 posted:buy her a nice diamond ring and a Rolex and you will never have another problem
Tried that. Didn't work. Now the very high end bicycle and sea kayak helped, as well as the Garmin Sports GPS watch. However, what really keeps her happy is me making time to ride and kayak with her. When we get home I play with my trains and she reads. Works for us.
IF you want the relationship to continue, you have to do things with your partner. If you are looking for a replacement, then lock yourself in the train room and buy more trains as they foreclose on the house.
Sounds like a job for Dr. Phil
@OGR CEO-PUBLISHER posted:How does this topic help the hobby? The title alone is negative and some of the responses here ... well, what can I say. I am especially concerned about the post by "paigetrain". Very sad indeed. We should be concentrating on how to find ways to involve our friends and family. Yet, I am willing to bet that this thread will receive tons of responses while others will be mostly ignored.
As the originator of this thread I have been surprised at some of the postings. As a physician I find that people need an outlet for certain negativities in their lives. Instead of thinking of this thread as a negative experience think of it as helping certain people being given an opportunity to say (so to speak) how they feel. By expressing your inner conflicts you might begin your journey to healing them.
As I read some of the responses I was surprised, and wondered if I had started a group therapy session.
Nonetheless, let’s think of it as a positive experience for some (be their stating wonderful things about their marriage or struggles that they would like to overcome). Again, as a doctor, I feel for some of the people posting somewhat unhappy issues. I wish that I could help them, but they are not my patients and I don’t impose myself upon others. However, I do find most of the postings to be either positive or humorous.
Alan
@CA John posted:I will have to respectfully disagree with Alan Arnold. I believe that a topic like this does help the hobby because we’re a family. A family that shares the happy and the sad and supports each other in either case. Though I do agree that the title is quite negative
My wife supports my hobby and has surprised me with rolling stock and other gifts for the layout. Though she hasn’t attended any local train shows she enjoys traveling to attend large scale garden railroad conventions around the US in order to go on the layout tours.
John
I really didn’t intend it to have the ring of negativity. However, what could I have expected using the word “hate” in the title. To me it was an oddity that some of our spouses have such strong feelings about our pastime. I was just lifting a word from some responses that I read in another topic.
For the most part, I was expecting this topic to generate humorous responses.
Alan
@jim911 posted:buy her a nice diamond ring and a Rolex and you will never have another problem
Yes, but women have short memories for nice things done for them. That probably counterbalances our tendency to overlook nicities to do for them. Since men don’t need to be complimented or admired as often as they do we tend to downplay it. Men typically have a philosophy of: if I don’t need it you don’t need it. When I do marriage counseling I find that the men usually have to pick up their game not the women. If the marriage has challenges first ask yourself if you are giving her what she needs.
This is not intended to a fix all for all challenged marriages , but it is too often a significant player. My perspectives are based on 44 years of medical practice and 44 years of a happy marriage.
Alan
Thanks so much for your kind comments, Tom D. Having posted a pic of our “Family Room” layout last week, I thought I’d also post a couple pics of the companion mini “Concert Salon” in case a few of our fellow OGR Forum colleagues might be a tad curious over your reference. The layout is in the darkened room across the entry hall. The volume shutters above the dining area are silent and quite fast, so that I truly think of the control pedal on the console as an “expression” pedal. Thanks as well to you, Dr. Alan, for posting this thread. I miss my wife dearly, but revel in the memories of what we shared over our train layout and performance venue. You have provided a blessed service to our OGR community. 
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My wife and girlfriend both like trains. May they never meet...
Seriously, some of the posts make me wonder why two people would stay together if there is animosity towards someone's hobby. Indifference is one thing, animosity is another.
