I am at work right now. I am sneaking time chatting about trains. All of my quality time is being sucked into my job. I should be home laying track right now. I could be working on fixing that handrail on my HO steamer that got bent. Instead i'm at work. I can't wait till I'm seventy and I get to retire and spend my good time with my layout. I know for a fact that I would not miss my workplace one bit. I never miss my old job, why would I miss this one? Ok, i'm done with my rant.
You'll be able to retire? I'm jealous! The wife and I have looked at our finances. We're figuring on working, (or should that be struggling along?), until about age 150. Oh for days in high school. When I had serious time available for trains......... Until women and cars came along. Oh boy did I make a couple of big mistakes! Boxcab E50
I knew I could get some support from my fellow train fans. Boxcab I think i'm probably in the same boat as you. I figure when it comes time to retire I'll have to move to south america or something like that.
Traingeekboy, Oh man, are you missing out! Listen, set up a small RR in your cubical! Run a tape recorder so it sounds like you're working the phone, and play at your desk! That's what I do! Why do you think I run N-scale!!!
I feel your pain, geeky. I'm sitting here at work, during the most productive time of the day for me. I'm terrible at night, I have no motivation. Bright and early in the morning is the best time for me to do anything.. and here I sit, feeling like i'm in Joe vs. the Volcano developing a brain cloud. I could be home airbrushing, setting up my door for my future layout, rewiring my dash9 lights.. Guess I have to be content just doodling layouts on my scratch pads between calls, and tooling around trainboard.
LMAO.... Geeky, I think I'm a bit like Boxcab, except I'll do that by choice. Inactivity REALLY kills me and I need a certainly level of stress jsut to keep going. Now, I am sure I could stress myself magnificently on a model RR, but the main problem is, my tastes tend to be a bit expensive, so I'd hafta work to feed my addiction and get all the new toys. Work takes time from RR's, RR's cost money...vicious circle.
Geeky, I'm lucky that I work mostly out of my home at a job that challenges me daily. Besides, the more I work, the more I earn, and the more I can spend on model RR without incurring the Wrath of Jeanne. There'a a great temptation for me to work on the railroad during the day, and sometimes I do, during my lunch hour--if I get a lunch hour. It takes some discipline--or a deadline screaming at me--to stay out of the train room. Every Monday I make a deal with myself: I will complete four smaller projects or four parts of a large project this week. There's no cheating by leaving everything to Friday. If I have four small projects, I'll do one per day from Monday through Thursday. I start at 7 AM, and am usually finished by 2 or 3 PM, though sometimes I'm not finished until late in the evening. When I was in the corporate communications world, I often made deals with my writers and artists, who are sometimes almost bi-polar. I wanted them to commit to completing a four-hour task every day. After that--while they needed to be on premises--I recommended they develop their own skills and interests, and in a serious way. Productivity simply soared. Fact sheets that used to take two weeks now took four hours. BUT, two fact sheets in a day? No, you can't take tomorrow off. But people started turning in two a day anyway. I'm not sure what you do, but is there a way you can come up with a plan that marshalls your best acumen at work but still saves some for your personal interests? I've been a professional worker for 38 years now; 22 of them were in office settings. I found ways to conserve my energy for my changing interests--maybe you could too?
I'm just lucky that I am independently wealthy; my wife works. [ May 13, 2005, 04:25 PM: Message edited by: sapacif ]
Geeky, look on the bright side. At least your job allows internet access. Mine typically involves (a) sand (b) mud or (c) rain, usually in excessive quantities and sometimes mixed in together. Add to that machinery designed for the express purpose of ending human life. large quantities of explosives and other hazardous materials, and little to no positive human contact. On the bright side for me, at least I sometimes get to shoot things!
Retirement is facing me in about six weeks. Not only will I take a pay cut, but I need to work and will probably have less time than I have now. While I do need to work, but I don't want to go back to a sixty hour week. I want to drive around the airport and make sure all the gates are locked! Some kind of low stress job like that.
Geeky: "I figure when it comes time to retire I'll have to move to south america or something like that." Be sure you bring all the modeling supplies you plan to use. Hobby shops are scarcer than hen's teeth down here. Ed
I'm glad I retired at 53, eleven years ago. My life has no structure. I do what I want to, when I want to... Stay cool and run steam.....
"...want to drive around the airport and make sure all the gates are locked! Some kind of low stress job like that...." NOT THESE DAYS IT ISN'T.
So now you have me wondering- How do you manage to obtain anything needed? Does mail order/e-mailing work at all? Boxcab E50
Geeky, I retired in 1995. I had my first paying job working Saturdays four hours washing tractor gears and transmission cases at Claude Kern's John Deere Dealer in Aline, Oklahoma. I was paid $2.00 each Saturday. I have worked at some kind of job from driving a tractor during harvest to designing robotic machinery, ending up on government black projects at retirement. Now I am 74 and fully retired, working on my last layout maybe a couple of hours a day at best. I got started with trains in 1934 when I got a wind-up train and my Dad made a table, nailed the track down and we played trains every evening. He got the silver-gray Lionel Hudson in 1936 and we built a large layout in the basement. All the kids came to play on it. In 1937 we started into "Scale" HO trains, gave the Lionel to my cousin, and by 1939 we were building our own engines. (Dad had a complete machine shop in the basement that I grew up with while he taught me to run each one.) All through my working career I was involved in, or in charge of, the company's tool room or model shop, which allowed me access to specialized machinery, and processes to make lost wax castings, cold forgings, electro plating, PC boards, injection moldings, and coining. Dad and I made BRASS engines before they were imported from Japan, but ours were all equalized, so never derailed on the rough track of the day. Dad taught me to make certain I was doing "company" work all the time during the 8 hours to prevent getting fired. (I saw a lot of guys go this way). I usually had permission and the company keys to work in the tool rooms any time I wanted after hours, even over week ends. I was able to do this because it was often my job to train operators to run the machinery or machines we manufactured, so of course, I had to be able to run each one myself, including all the tool room equipment we used to make our dies, tools, jigs, fixtures, mold bases, wax masters, prototypes and models with. My work experience covers two port folios and I am just now throwing away some of the prototype assemblies I designed and or made myself. Through all this I followed my Dad's example of working on my hobbies each day at least one hour, so I learned to be productive and really work to get my little job done. This sounds like great fun, and it was, but I burnt out around 1993. I had worked with mixing polyurethanes and epoxies of all kinds and became sensitized to the polyisocyanate catalysts and developed what the doctors thought was terminal emphysema, but was not. It turned out I had instead, coated my lungs with thin layers of plastic, which makes it as if trying to breathe through a plastic bag over your head. From years of working with various microscopes, my left eye is now blurred permanently, and I need glasses to read with. Don't count on being in as good a health as you are today! So my advice to you Geeky, is this: Keep your plans in mind, and do whatever you can to promote your hobby every chance you get legally. Do NOT get yourself fired for getting caught stealing time from a company during working hours! You will never live that down, it will follow your record for ever! Besides you have to live with your own conscience! Start NOW while you are young to save money. Get in the habit of putting a few cents or a few bucks into an interest bearing savings account and let it grow until you can buy a CD at the Bank. Keep on saving, and keep buying them and roll them over when they mature. NEVER NEVER make time payments for ANYTHING except a house, and if you just have to, a car. Never use credit cards, they will eat you alive. Look for bargains, buy them cash, and always pay your taxes. Eat and live as healthily as you possibly can. Take at least 30 minutes after supper each evening to simply sit and talk with your wife and kids to relieve stress. Spend some quality time with them at home and away from home at least twice a week. When you are not under stress, you will make time to do anything you really want to do. That may be make a train layout, or go play golf, or swing the kids. It will become as easy as rain, but you have to get in the habit while you are young. Keep in mind that your job is never as important as your family which must come first. That is a problem if you decide to own a business, because then that business must come first, and the family second, in America, or you will not be able to compete. Make wise decisions, ask questions, study, learn all you can about anything you can, you never know when it could come in handy. Make sure you only buy the best quality you can afford, never buy poor quality and expect it to last. Now, if you wait until you are 65 or 75 to start building a layout, you will more than likely NOT get it. Start now, get a board, put some track and a switch on it and run an engine back and forth of an evening. It will relieve stress, give you something to look foreword to, and provide something to think about during the day. Let it grow as you gain the space. If girlfriends come along, be prepared to pack it away, because the two don't mix (1:99), and wont mix once a child comes wandering in (0.5:0.99.5). (I think I have one of the three wives on this TB that want to help with a train layout.) Take your time and pick her out wisely, and stay away from shot guns! Keep your "Train" money separate from the "Family" money and never cheat, keep it. Encourage your wife to keep her account. Pay bills, house payments, etc out of the Family money, and you will have a reasonable peaceful life, and your trains too. If you do this, you will be able to afford a house big enough to have any size layout you want in whatever scale you please. So there you have it Geeky, can you do it, or will you chicken out? There is no looking foreword to "someday" when you come to stand beside me, if you haven't done it by the time you get here, you aren't going to get to. I am not just a loud mouth know-it-all, I am speaking from experience from "the someday" you are waiting for. I am there now Geeky, think about it often!! Now I'm going to go play trains on my old layout. "C" ya...when you get here.
Watash: Greatest post of all time. You win! Back to trains: What is a cold forge or cold forging? What is coining? What is "equalized" as in equalized drivers? Is that the same as sprung drivers? I am not too familar with steam engines. Thanks. Again, a great post!
