2025 Coffee Pot, New Pot, New Conversations, With Friends

Evening all. Took me a bit to get back in.
Hope all have been having a good year so far.

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Wish there was a forum just for postwar and prewar, both O and standard gauge. Don’t think a new mag would go very far, but there is an following to both with multiple companies. Even S scale would be interesting.

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Yes, that would be very interesting.

Rich

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Hi, everyone.
Not much to report here, just counting down the days until the train show I usually go to every year now is.
Looking forward to seeing what I can find,
(Maybe some IC, GM&O or CN stuff.)

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I am an S gauge operator/collector, but unfamiliar with a “Coffee Pot” thread.
I was a member of the old forum that was shut down but rarely posted there due to the inability to post pictures. This new forum is a vast improvement and I now participate here daily.
Were I making decisions for the future of this forum I would transition away from the Magazine based threads (or subforums) to a scale and technology based thread organization. Scale would be standard, O, S, HO, N and all others. By technology I mean DCC, Legacy, DCS and dead rail. I think that would better serve the interests of all participants.
Another important factor for long term success is manufacturer participation. For example, Lionel only monitors and participates (posts replies) in one forum (other than Facebook.) That is a critical factor for those in O and S gauge that use their equipment and control systems. It makes that forum a “must participate”, or at least a must read. Maybe in the future that could be this forum.
Perhaps the CTT forum should have a Photo of the Day thread and a New Purchases pair of threads.
I hope I am not too far off topic in the Coffee Pot thread.

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I agree. Maybe if tags worked, but I don’t know that they do, and I made a post about it and the moderators haven’t replied with any help…

The coffee pot is where we discussed anything but politics. We’d talk trains, but it wasn’t mandatory. Just a place to socialize really. We used to do it monthly but as more and more difficulties lowered the amount of active forum participants we changed it to being one thread for all of 2024.

We also gave the honor to the person who “started the pot brewing” each month to decide what we were having for breakfast. So it might have said “January 2025 Coffee Pot, 17 years and still brewing! Come on in for some grits and gravy!”. Or maybe “Green eggs and ham” was the dish of the month or around St. Patrick’s Day you do “Corned beef hash and Guinness”.

So. I’ve been sick for a week after doing a 3 day ambulatory EEG last Wed, Thurs, Friday. I finally started taking down my Christmas layout today and if I’m lucky I might be done by Valentine’s Day! :grin:. Oh, and today made it one year since I quit smoking!

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Congrats on the quitting smoking, Becky, and prayers for your good health.

Although I was on the old forum for years and years, I never participated in the Coffee Pot thread simply because I had to be pretty selective with my time online. Things are a little less pressured now, at least most of the year.

I would like nothing more for this forum than that it gain a substantial following and still remain a big tent: by scale or by magazine, I hope to see room made for all types of train folks. Not everyone is enamored of the gee-whiz-gim-crakery of modern electronics. Not everyone is into the latest-and-greatest. Not everyone can afford to cruise through the new catalogs and order three or four high-end locos and a passel of cars.

CTT has always been willing to accommodate the bigger picture. Yes, Lionel (and then MTH) have predominated, but S and SG and even Marx have had their adherents heeded and respected. This is not so much the case elsewhere. However things get organized, I hope this broad spectrum of interests find homes here.

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Congratulations Becky! I quit smoking in the summer of 2023. I came down with a BAD summer cold and when I tried taking a drag on a smoke I choked on it.
“Well, now’s as good a time as any!” I said to myself and haven’t lit one up since. In fact it really wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be, I guess the cold saw to that!
Anyway, I’ll be honest. The reason I smoked as long as I did (50 years) was I enjoyed it. Every once in a while I’ll still get the urge but it passes quickly.
(Sorry to swerve close to the political but every time someone of a certain persuasion tried to tell me how good the economy was I’d say “Look friend, I quit smoking so there should be an extra $275 each month in my wallet because of that and guess what? It’s not there. My spendng habits haven’t changed either. Don’t tell me how great the economy is.”

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I quit smoking February, 1980. At that time, I was up to three packs a day. Each pack cost 35¢, and $1.05 each day was killing my bank account.

Finally, when my wife was ready to give birth to our first child, she made me go out onto the patio to smoke. There I was, in the cold, the rain, and wind, puffing away. I thought, “How stupid do I have to be to keep this up?” I quit.

In the 45 years, I still get the urge every-so-often for one.

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I quit smoking 45 years ago also.
When I go to the doctor’s or hospital they ask if I smoke?
They nod their head. “That’s why you have a partially collapsed lung,” they say.
“What, even though I stopped 45 years ago?”
“Yes.”

Pass me a glass of brandy.

David

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I smoked as a teenager, but I quit cold turkey in my mid-20s - - too long ago to put a date on it. :rofl:

Rich

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Anyone else waiting to go to the Great Train Show in Costa Mesa? Since I live in Fallbrook its only an hour and a half away. I went last year when it was down at the Del Mar Fairgrounds, and had a great time. Incidentally, the first time I went, it was also at the Fairgrounds, but I was 5 years old! I can still remember looking at an old Playmobil G Gauge set at the show, and the next day I woke up to see it in the living room for me! What a special time. I still have that set safely stored in the shed by the way.

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I was not aware of this show, it seems to not be on the NASG Events page. I should probably go to it. They claim Lionel will be there, if so I would like to ask about the status of S gauge.

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I don’t know about this coming show, but the Southern California S Gaugers were at the last one. I really enjoy their layouts being a Flyer guy myself.

They are not listed under operating model railroads on the 2/15-16/2025 website.

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I started smoking as a teenager quite 8years ago, I love talking toy trains, and no politics get that everyday. this “coffee pot” thread is new to me but willing to try it out.

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Tony V: those old Playmobil trains were great! I remember seeing them at toy stores and in the Walthers catalogs.

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And so well built! I’ve had that train for 13 years or so and its never stopped running. I have never needed to do more than some oil on the drive axles and cleaning the pickup shoes. Even vintage toy trains, despite being such sturdy toys, need regular maintenance, but that Playmobil train has been bulletproof. Kudos to whoever designed the motor in it.

The grand return of the coffee pot!

and it’s busier than it was on the ‘old’ forum by the end… so many posts within a 24 hour period!

@smokey1 I am active on another forum, unaffiliated with a magazine, which has scale-specific forum categories. It is nice when trying to look for topics pertaining specifically to O gauge or S gauge. But I have also found that I end up checking all the forums anyways, because sometimes somebody still asks about “fixing their grandpa’s old Lionel set from the '40s” in the forum for HO scale.
I agree with what others are saying, some sort of tagging system would be brilliant. I seem to recall the old forum had one that worked reasonably well. Granted, that was probably the only part of the old forum that you could say that about! :stuck_out_tongue:

-El