Calling all Working age adults, parents and SINKS/DINKS

Yes yes, that was not my intent at all. Just a place to commiserate.

 

Mark,

I think this post was more along the lines of how young folks do it. What with kids and juggling little time left for the hobby. I think anything overly offensive would of been shot down immediately. To get this post back on track no pun intended, this hobby is a stress relief for me. Its therapy. My wife loves my hobby. We don't have kids yet but can only imagine the challenge alot of you guys face with time management but would imagine when your kids are old enough you can make it bonding time.

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I rarely have time for the hobby anymore. I'm working nearly 60 hours a week just to keep our heads above water and a 13 month old boy at home requires as much time with daddy as possible. I get my modeling fix on Saturday and Sunday mornings really early before everyone else gets up.

But I have no regrets! It is nice to look to the future and know after another kid and my wife goes back to work there might me a little more time. And then there is the free manual labor for layout construction when my son gets older, whether he likes trains or not.

I think this is a common position among young parents such as myself.

Previous responses to this thread mentioned the lack of participation in clubs from "non-retired" members. I have been involved in all of the local clubs (all 2 of them) and found them both to have good involvement from people from all different situations. The fact I am a lone wolf by choice is not relevant to this thread. However, time is a great restriction toward club participation and it is a fact of life for most with young children at home.



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You find the thread sexist, offensive and ageist because This thread was generically targeted towards younger working families' involvement in the hobby?

You are right, the hobby is for EVERYONE! I felt discriminated against due to my young age by others "In the hobby", but that was such a small fraction of the hobby community as a whole. No sour grapes here.

I've never liked the usage of the name "Connie", it sounds amateurish but what do I know? But yes, I know what a Consolidation is, thank you for pointing that out.

Oh, the old my way or the highway thing again. Thanks for sharing that, too.

 

We're getting off topic, I'll take responsibility.

After thinking about this more on the drive to work this morning, the following observation would be a more accurate description of what I have seen:

Expanding of what YoHo started off the thread with, the retirement age folks in the hobby are either the majority of the modeling community or the most active due to time/money/etc. Now with that having been said, from my experience, the politics of a club drives the attitudes of members.

One club I was in was mostly middle-aged guys who still had kids at home and worked full time, but they built quite a nice layout in the club house. I was not a fan of the politics and I regularly felt left on the sidelines, there was an aristocratic air about several of the members. I was a college student with a switching layout and I was trying to associate with doctors and professionals who were modeling darn near Proto:87 (which I learned to love Proto:87 later on). I heard membership had changed some, but they are now a 100-mile round trip away from me and I can't afford that right now. Another club I belonged to is less than 15 miles down the road. The membership was more diverse in age and the politics were not an issue for me. However, the scope of planning and modeling for the club layout left a lot to be desired and I didn't have time to devote to be a regular member, much less try to swing the goals of their new proposed club layout to a higher degree of modeling than brass track, horn hook couplers and dinosaurs. (Nothing wrong with that, but that isn't what attracts me to the hobby).

I was part of a round-robin group for about 18 months almost 7 years ago now. Each wednesday night we were at somebody's house running trains, talking, visiting, eating, you name it. We had almost 12 layouts on rotation, with about 16-18 regular members. All of them I consider my friends, I still meet them once or twice a year for a show in Pittsburgh or go railfanning on the West End. No dues, no politics, no destructive criticism....... "It's your layout, you're the boss" attitude. Half of them were retired, almost all of them atleast 20 years older than me, but they didn't care. It was a member of this group who pushed me (by example) to try hand laying track and look into Sergent couplers.

No group like that here, I guess if I want that kind of group again I need to get involved in the club up the road again and spin off from there.

The hobby is what we make it, but family and work should always come first. Getting stressed over internet forum posts is not neccesary and subtracts from the hobby, in my view.

 

I am 36 and married with no kids, thankfully. I work 44 hours a week and get a lot of modelling in during the winter months after work. Since I'm Canadian, the 5 months of snow free days means I am on the river flyfishing with the wife.
I absolutely refuse to join any model railroad club. Although a couple friends with layouts rotate through my house, and I visit their layouts on unsheduled nights. I attended a few of the local clubs for no more than 4 times, until I realized it's just too much politics and infighting, and no actual model railroading.

 

I am young still. I run half-marathons in the two-hour range, mostly because I am a bit overweight and don't train like I should. I cycle, do stand-up paddle boarding, and look after a substantial garden and yard. I can still crank out 30 proper pushups. I am young enough to have been able to put my graduate degree into good use and teach on-line. My students range from young private soldiers to psychiatrists, physicians, lawyers, and clerics.

I'm 62.

I joined the hobby late in my life, in January of 2005. I am on my third layout, and on each one I have tried something new and complicated. I tried spline roadbed on my second, and a hand-crafted 7' diameter helix on the one under way. I moderated the Model Railroader Magazine forum family for three years as a form of service to that community, and to lead by example. I was an officer in the Canadian Armed Forces for 30 years, and by now it just comes naturally.

I didn't mature until late in life. I was lazy, still have some of that, and not very ambitious or switched on. I was self-absorbed, still have some of that. I eventually learned that being in my own head a lot makes me miss some of the finer things in life, and is a form of isolation. As time grows short, isolation is deadly.

I try to relate to everyone as much as I can on these forums, but if modern railroading doesn't appeal to me, I should not be pressured into liking it. Similarly, those who are interested in that part of the hobby should not have to endure my own expressions of interest.

So, where does that leave us? It leaves each of us behooving to carving our own paths in the hobby, and certainly our way through these forums. We can ask thought-provoking questions and monitor the ensuing discussion, or we can just lurk. We can ask for help or advice, or we can just commiserate. The choices remain ours. As long as there is good will and tolerance, I don't see why we can't all get something useful out of our time on trainboard.

 

I have a slightly different problem. I am 43, have 2 boys 9 & 10, a professional job and a mortgage. I also live in the uk, but my interest is American prototype. There are loads of model railroad clubs locally, but none that model US, so very little interest for me. My current project has been embarked upon with my boys so we can spend some quality time together and have some fun. At times I am envious of the guys living in the US with the clubs on your doorstep, but when I take a step back and take into account everything that I have going on I wouldn't be able to do a club justice. Guess I will carry on with the layout with the kids and dream of what might have been, had I been born in the US.(I would probably be modelling British outline just to be different, lol)

 

Oh, I don't know, My 2 year old already thinking he owns the club. We have some strict rules about kids operating, but honestly, being able to see a "big" layout energizes kids.

The issue is of course, some have no use for Kids near their models. That is a club issue, but eh, you have that issue in any adult endeavor you bring your children to.

I don't want to get into a referendum on club membership. To each their own. The big advantage of a club is that you can, generally, operate on a larger layout that is possibly more complete than what I at least have space and time for at home. You also have a group of like minded people that share an interest.

Sure, like any organization that has bylaws and possibly dues, there's probably personalities to be dealt with. These are the tradeoffs of life. But it is worth it to both have someplace to just go run a train when I don't have time to finish a layout at home...and I enjoy public events like shows and open houses. Showing my hobby to others.

We're open for the Placer County Fair this weekend in fact.

 

As a SINK, I've tried three times to reply to this thread but didn't finish my posts because I became confused. At my soon to be former job I worked an average of 6 days a week for the better part of three years(I've only been a Model railroader for two). In this time I've made one layout, and failed to build 4 maybe 5 of them due to a lack of time, money, focus, or patience. I joined the NMRA so I could join my friends OMNI rail group, with that group I hope to improve upon my skills. Frankly, I don't mind the "old fellas" in the hobby the thing that does bug me is that they expect everyone to have an enormous amount of free time. I'll admit I have more free time than I sometimes admit to, but technically that's spent taking care of other things so it's truly not free time.

I've had that SP&S kit for about a week and a half still haven't touched it, it took me a year and a half to get DCC and 6 months to equip all of my stuff with DCC. That's not a long time to some, but when I'm not at work or looking for a career, what I'm not getting done usually sits at the front of my mind like the caboose kit or those SNC boxcars that are in dire need of trucks. Or those Lowell Smith GP9's, must get those ordered.

Edit: Forgot to add that with my new job comes weekends off, so 48 hours worth of trainshows that I can attend with my new club

 

27 and change here... have been collecting trains in several scales since I was 6. I have a few projects on my to do list right now, none of which are going anywhere fast. In progress are a pair of compact layouts, each 2'x4', one in N (freelanced branch in South Jersey) and the other in Z (freelanced eastern PA). The N is a compromise- while I have a few N scale pieces I'd never let go of, the only reason why I picked N was because I could run Baldwins and FMs instead of just EMD since that's about all there is in Z right now. I was getting ready to lay track, but decided to put off doing anything until after I move so that I don't have to worry about damage in transit. I may be able to expand them to 2'x6' when I get into the new place, but one wall across one room is the absolute limit of my train space and that has to be shared with a workbench. They'll probably have to be stacked. I'm still excited as all getout because it'll really be the first time I've had permanent train space (I had a stow-away layout that was literally pinned onto a cork board in college, and since then a smaller test loop built the same way). At this point having actual scenery and buildings is a major step forward.

My long term plan is to go back to HO, the reason being the availability of Pennsy steam and steam in general. I'd rather work in a smaller scale, but I took a long hard look at myself in the mirror and decided "nope, it's gotta be steam and it's gotta be Pennsy" and that was that. I've been sneaking in an HO purchase every now and again since I have just about everything I need to put the compact layouts together (except time). My next semi-major project after I have my small scale trains running will be to build a working static display for HO steam, so the shelf queens have something to do while they wait for me to build them a permanent home.

At the moment all my trains are going in boxes, so I can't spend time on them. When I do, though, it's mostly tinkering and assembling kits- I had a lot of fun recently trying to put together an Animek Z transfer caboose, though it took a header off my desk when I was trying to glue the steps on (that part was less fun). I've also picked back up a project from a couple years ago, scratchbuilding three-dome tankers- also on hold now since my dremel tool is packed up, but I have some ideas for when I unpack. Mostly I just try to squeeze something in every day, even if it's just replacing a coupler or running a string of hoppers around the test loop for a few minutes.

 

Well, I'm going to chehalis to see what I can gather from a hobby shop there. I've been thinking of just doing another 2 x 4 when I'm not running around to Omni rail events.

 

" Just remember, you young whipper-snappers "

What's a whipper-snapper ?

 

Isn't or was it not a candy at one point? LOL

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