I guess I am like a lot of you guys and gals on this site. We have hard jobs, lots of bills, questionable credit, live a hard life, have more education than we can get “paid” for and more than we can remmber how to use. I spent yrs drag racing mustangs , well more like test and tune at MILAN dragway since I could not afford a trailer. Load up two cars and make three or four passes make repairs and drive all the way back to Toledo every week. One day I just sold all of my racing stuff including my mustang ( which was a 10 second street terror NOS and all) and started collecting model trains. Since I came from a railroad family and started out between cars and trians it seemend natural I guess to go back. After I left for the Army and my combat duty I came home to find out my RR engineer father threw out all of my trains. Ah, structure LOL. In my family you either joined the military or worked for the RR. Funny cause my kid is getting ready with his Infantry unit to go back into combat ops. This brings me to my point. Now over the last four and half yrs I like many of you have gotten to very much enjoy trains. Me and my wife both have stressful union jobs and it is so very nice to go out to the tracks and watch trains whenever we get the chance. I enjoy every last rail car. Sure the locomoitves are great too. But I love to see if there are any old school cars from back in the day. watching trains hit cross overs at “allowed” speed and watching the rail cars rock back and forth wobble on there trucks. All the rust noise and joints in the rail. We have made some good friends who are ture rail fans not “foamers” who act like little school girls. We have made friends with rail crew, train crew, police, mail people, and towns people. that is the great part of rail fanning. The weather and the people. We had a very bad tornado last year come through right by us and unfortunatle
Its human nature to be interested in death and destruction it seems. People slow down to gawk at an accident on the highway when they drive by, and “World’s scariest motorcycle crashes number 9” is “must-see tv”
One of the largest (and coolest) Model Railroads in the area I live in was is built, owned and operated by a Guy who’s other hobby is drag racing a heavily modified Ford Pinto. I visited the pike on a layout tour a couple years ago and he told me that he expected to be able to spend more time on the RR as his wife had finally convinced him that he was getting a little old for drag racing…
It’s called the Aquidneck Valley railroad and it’s been featured in Model Railroader…
So your in good company…
Never a big fan of Drag Racing…too much waiting time for too little track time…much like MofW employees.