I happened to catch the last five minutes of “American Dad” the other night and found it featured model railroading.
http://americandad.wikia.com/wiki/The_Shrink
The main character experiences a traumatic event and the therapist recommends model building as a coping mechanism. He becomes (ahem) obsessed and his wife expresses concern over his obsession to detail and missing work. He and his family end up using a shrink ray to become small enough to live in the model which is great until the ants show up to eat the mountain he made out of mashed potatoes. The final scene was hilarious as the dad has the kids cut the power to the clock tower (a la Back to the Future) so he can boost the train speed all the way from 8 to 10, derail the train on the bridge, and crash into the dam to flood the model.
A wife expressing concern of a husband’s obssession with model railroading? How do these Hollywood types ever come up with this stuff?!
The person who came up with that plot line NEEDS A HOBBY!
Well you should have caught the whole episode to get the full story. Fran’s concern was his obession was anything except the family and his work. Stan gets obsessed with something in every episode. In this case it was his “minatures” in which his psychologist just happens to be the owner of the minature manufacturer. It was to the psychologist’s financial advantage to direct Stan to use that coping mechanism (which was one of the the real points of the episode). Model Railroading had very little to do with it. His minature town just happens to have a railroad on it.
The modeling to cope with loss is a real thing. A layout that was donated to Boothbay Railway Village a few years ago was done by a man who had lost his son. I do not remember the details, but the dad built or completed an HO layout to help him through the grief of his loss.
I know two other tv shows that mention railroading.
Big Bang Theory- One of the main characters Sheldon Cooper loves railroading. Little facts about Amtrak, Thomas and friends, and small interest in model railroading. A mishap talks about buying an N Scale set and putting the entire locomotive in his mouth. It’s not N Scale it’s Z Scale.
Two and Half Men- When Jon Cryer had sex with his ex-wife in her current husband’s HO Scale train set. But the crossing buck they showed at the end was G Scale.
Back when I used to watch a little TV, I remember seeing Family Ties where the father character, played by Michael Gross, had some sort of medical problem and his doctor recommended he get a hobby - so he turned to model trains in the episode. I remember seening him featured in magazines later. Here is a quote from his wiki:
"Gross is a passionate railfan with an extensive collection of railroad antiques. He is an amateur railroad historian, photographer, modeler, and part-owner in a working railroad, the Santa Fe Southern Railway, a former branch line of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway which operates between Lamy and Santa Fe, New Mexico.[7] He is also the spokesman for the World’s Greatest Hobby campaign sponsored by the Model Railroad Industry Association that promotes the hobby of model railroading. He has also been a spokesperson for Operation Lifesaver