Once while running my Cab Forward steamer at a public show…an older gentleman motioned me to the side & said very softly…“son, do you realize you are running that steam engine backwards?”
ROFLMAO!![(-D] That’s a good one!
My sister-in -law can’t look at the little HO figures on my layout. They creep her out and she has to turn away from the layout!! (figure THAT one out!)
In one of the Allen Keller videos Howard Zane told a story of when he was trying to sell his house with the first Piermont division layout. A Realtor lady told him before she would list his house he would have to get all that junk out of the basement.
Along those lines, my wife and I were watching one of those “Flip this House” shows once, and somewhere in the Los Angeles area, a flipper bought the house from an older gentleman, and in the basement, there was a nicely done layout that looked like it was Pacific Electric…with all the catenary, full scenery, everything done very well.
Instead of getting the guy to help them and figure out how to get it out of there without damaging anything, they just started swinging sledgehammers. I was cringing through the whole scene.
Shows:
“How much does your wife allow you to spend on your toys?”
$40/month more if there is a special occasion or an engine that I have discussed with her. There are three that fall into this range. A Swiss Rail Krokodile, another Little Joe, or a Yellowstone.
“How long have you been playing with trains?”
Since I was two. My first train was a Marklin SNCF Pacific, which my mother purchased for my brother and I because my dad wouldn’t let us play with the Fleischmann.
“Don’t you play video games?”
Yes, I do. But I also build models, do yard work, and am a husband and father, I play and build trains to allow me to recharge to do all of the more important things.
“Are you rich?”
No I work for the state.
Family questions
From two different sister-in-laws: “My husband wants to put a garden railroad into the backyard. I think it’s a great idea, would you be willing to help?”
Me: “Sure. First question. Are you independantly wealthy?”
Sister-in-laws: “No, but it can’t be that expensive.”
Me: $500 dollars for a good engine, $30-$70 a car, and then you need the sheds to store the models and then of course there is the track, so if you aren’t independantly wealthy, do you have a surplus of cash that needs blowing.
Sister-in-laws: “No, no surplus of cash, but they are just toys…”
Me: “And your $10K quilting frame is just a hobby too.”
I’ve been asked about steering wheels all the time.
Here’s one my brother asked me about real trains:
“Isn’t it dangerous to have power lines over the train tracks?”
[(-D]
When the club has one of its layouts on display it annoys me no end to hear people say words like ‘choo choo’ ‘woo woo’ or ‘whistle’ when there are diesels running on the layout.
I would have had to pull an Elvis and shot the TV I hate stupid people and hat stupid people on TV even more
When I our High School MRR club was formed we had to get approval from the school board, so we went to a meeting and gave a presentation. 2 questions were asked that fit this subject:
After showing one of the club members N&W class J steamer we where asked:
“That looks neat, does it do anything?”
So after describing how it’s powered by electricity which runs through the rails to the motor ect. we were asked:
“Isn’t that a major fire hazard, with the electricity going through the uninsulated rails?”
[banghead] We got our approval but needless to say it was a LONG night…
We had an open house at our MR club and I was running a long (80 car) unit coal train with 6 engines (2 in front, 2 mid, 2 rear). There is a spedometer on both mains near the large yard and I had been clocking at 39/40 SMPH (Scale MPH). We typically don’t run much faster during sessions so I figured that it would be an ok speed for the guests during the open house. My train was starting to come through a portal and around a sweeping curve towards where a family (man, wife, two boys about 7 or 8) stood watching the lead units come around the curve. One of the boys remarked about how “slow” the trains were moving. Dad looked at me (seeing my throttle-DT400) and asks if they can run faster. I replied that I could go quicker and upon checking to see that all was well with my train I ‘notched up’. I went through the speed trap at around 85 SMPH. The hiss/singing of the metal wheels on the mains must’ve spooked the younger of the two boys as he got behind mom and wouldn’t come out until the last locos passed.
Conversely we had the opposite happen at another open house a couple months back. Two guys discovered they were in opposing directions on the same main. Had they gone the ‘speed limit’ the cornfield wouldn’t have happened…ala Kismet…ouch.
Amen.
That one I hear a lot. Note, though, they did say “Toys”. After all, we do refer to these locomotives and such as “Toy Trains”[:-^] Hey, if we can refer to them as “toy trains” then we should allow them the same—[:-^]
mmmmm–Audrey got her quilting frame from a second hand store for $5. Kinda makes one go MMMM[%-)]
Her 6 Harness loom–which stands on the floor–was also got from a Goodwill store of all places----she makes $$$$ from her hobby–[oX)][:-^]
My favourite lines are more along the lines of “You mean those rails are uninsulated?”—or “Why do you have cars on roads?”[%-)]
Then there is a bunch of people who don’t know real trains carry things----they think they’re just big toys[%-)][banghead]
Honestly I don’t think he was too far off the mark.[^] I do play Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 on the xbox and when I do switch to operating the train layout it IS in fact quite a bit slower…[:-^]
My wife sometimes calls them “Choo-choos”, but only when she wants to mess with me.
My daughters used to request high speed crashes, but I guess that I’m no fun in that regard since I never complied with these sorts of requests.
Seriously…?! These people breathe on their own?
Face it, people will say goofy things no matter what your hobby is. When I used to drag race, and I’d be working on the car, neighborhood kids would invariably ask me, "Can you do a “poppa wheelie”? Then they’d want me to pull out on the street in front of my house and show them. Um, no, never did.
You’d wonder sometimes!! lol!!
There was a couple that got stuck at a RR crossing awhile back that could not understand that those trains could hurt them!! A buddy of mine and I ended up talking to them about what they carried—turned out they had no idea[%-)][:-^]
Sometimes------[sigh]
I get this one about once a month, and it started about a month after I moved into the house:
“So have you set up your trains yet? Can I come down and see them?”
I patiently explain that it’s not a matter of just “setting them up,” but it is a 25-year project to build a layout and the track plan took 18 months to design.
They understand pretty quickly.
I’m delighted that they are genuinely interested in seeing the trains, but I do feel the need to dispel their perception of scale model trains as tinplate tracks set up on the carpet and then put away in a Rubbermaid bin when I’m done for the day…
-Jason
being a model railroader in high school, I get asked really stupid questions all the time. requests for crashes, questions about steering wheels, people not knowing the difference between steam and diesel, and the one we all hate to hear come out of little kids mouths at train shows “where’s Thomas?” or other related questions, but recently I was asked a question by a classmate that blew me away, she asked “whats a freight train carry, I thought they all carried people” despite what i wanted to say, I calmly replied, “anything but people, thats what freight is” honestly, the stupidity of some high schoolers never ceases to amaze me
I’ve had people ask if I put the RR up for Christmas and take it down every year. My layout fills a 17.5’ x 22’ room on 2 levels with a helix. I’ve been asked how many trainsets I have. Seems non-MRRs think only in terms of trainsets. And how many trains can I run at one time? I try to be patient, but it’s hard sometimes. Jcopilot