How do you all do it?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Hi all,

I have recently found out that I will be a father for the first time! My wife and I are very excited to say the least. My side of the family has a long history of “playing with trains” so he or she will probably get started before walking or talking. Right now I have a small collection of N scale equipment (B&O/PRR) and an even smaller nearly complete layout to run it on. I am glad I planned small and don’t have a huge layout to worry about! As with any big life change we have our financial situation to worry about, so times may get tight in the railroad world real soon. We are not struggling, but with many young couples, don’t have a lot of green to throw at stuff “we don’t need” I was on-line the other night looking at more equipment, engines, new layout ideas, etc… If you really want to get into it, it adds up! I have learned the lesson that cheap stuff especially locos are just that…you just go out and buy another because the one you bought before runs like a meat grinder. After thinking about it, I found the idea of spending hundreds of dollars on train items when you have a baby on the way to be pretty scary. Unfortunately, it is a hobby that isn’t going to improve the way you (or your new family) lives, like a new roomier car or house, etc… We here all know what trains mean to us, but I wish they were more of a justifiable item that we buy. I was reading the feature article in the newest edition of Great Model Railroads, the BNSF one on the cover. I can’t imagine what the costs involved in that project, it looks great though. I know no matter how much coal I push on down the line, ther isn’t going to be a little n-scale man paying me for my time, hehe.

I was wondering what all of you pre-retirment modelers do during tighter times? I just don’t want to leave the hobby like I did after high school. I returned about 2 years ago

2

I hear ya. I bought a house a few months back…and haven’t been working on the layout much. I’m still in the hobby, but I don’t get new items as often as I used to. I still have things to work on though–I built up a huge stash of kits before I signed on the dotted line, and I don’t plan on buying new kits any time soon :slight_smile:

3

There were some problems over the years and probably some losses along the way but overall my family did well with trains inspite of several children. Me personally wont see children with my spouse surviving cancer and it’s effects at this point in time. But if it happened that children were on the way, I would use the 9 months to stock up a few Thomases, wood trainsets one robust O gauge set and box up all the “Good stuff” Hopefully once the children grew they will enjoy the trains and learn how to appreciate them. In time when they grow up and leave the nest there will be some railroading done if we all made it that far. If you had a secure space for the layout that is easily closed off against roaming infants that would be one way.

4

Why not? Granted the motor/drive train/trucks would probably need to be bought (unless wrapping the wires for a motor is your idea of fun), but everything else can be made from either brass bar or styrene…

I mean, there are/were some great scratchbuilt steamers, and one of the members of the club i belong to scratchbuilt an F A/B set (er, i think… diesel isn’t my forte).

5

Rob,

1st off, congratulations. You are now enetering into the most challenging, rewarding, frustrating and stressful time of your life: being a parent. You will soon have several epiphanies, amingst which are complete understandings of why your own father drank, why he has no hair, and/or why he always had that sort of confused, far-off stare.

I have 3 children of my own, and you’ll quickly discover that railroading takes a back seat not only to raising th kids, but simply finding some quiet time to decompress. Yet the rewards are unbelievable.

Now, as to keeping up with your railroading, there are some areas where cash can be saved (and boy, you’ll be needing every penny soon enough). For starters, sheet plastic for structures, scratchbuilding, etc, while not pricey, does add up. Check out the aisle at your local WalMart where they sell mail boxes, etc, for those plastic “for sale”, “for rent” etc signs. these are styrene, of good quality, and are the size of a sheet of paper for a buck or less each. Also, start saving tose little plastic rectangular tags from loafs of bread. They are excellent for making shims, hatches, etc. Wash out and save all those individual size yogurt and fruit cups, etc. these are great for mixing paint and washes in, for making sifters for ground foam, etc, you can never have too many.

Start using the craft paints from WalMart or Target or wherever. These are very inexpensive, come in handy flip-top squeeze bottles that keep the paint from drying out, and last forever if you use them right. You might need to thin them a tad with distilled water, but hey, for less than a dollar a bottle they are great, and really excellent for both terrain and weathering.

Shop on ebay or at the local club meets, or even at yard sales, thrift stores, etc. i scored a bundle

6

Rob:

Echoing Gwedd’s sentiments, congratulations and welcome to the ride and buckle up tight. I have 4 tax deductions, uh, kids, myself, with the youngest turning 18 months old today. I’ve been where you are. The hard truth is that a great many things that are important to you now will become back-burner items very quickly as you experience mind boggling priority shifts. In my case, the trains stayed in storage for quite a long time, becoming the stuff I thought about to preserve my sanity as I sat holding the little one at 3 in the morning.

Take heart, though. I promise that your life will eventually stretch to accomodate both family and hobby. I finally started work on my new layout last Spring, and now the little guy LOVES trains. He loves looking at train pictures on the computer, he loves Daddy’s coffee table train books, and he LOVES and BEGS to go in the basement to watch Daddy’s trains run. He even has a favorite locomotive (a 2-8-2 steamer - that’s my boy!).

And as Gwedd mentioned, feel free to pm or email me as well. Fatherhood is the most difficult exhasting frustrating maddening incredibly wonderful and rewarding job you’ll ever have.

Jim

7

I have two hellions myself. Time isn’t that much of an issue since they are both in their teens and don’t want us around anymore (except when they need money). While I love my kids, I am not sure “rewarding” is a term I would include!

Stick with the MRR, because you (and your wife) WILL need an outlet. Kids are important, but they are not the center of the universe. Too much focus can lead to too much stress, fatigue, and a bad marriage–and those are not good for any kid.

Money has been an issue and I usually have dry spells where nothing major will be purchased except around tax refund time, my birthday and xmas (I usually just ask for money for trains, but I still keep getting ties and wallets). I had three major “capital” purchase phases–1) building layout, 2) buying DCC system, and 3)purchasing sound/dcc locos.

Everything else can be done or bought at your own “pace”. A car here and there, etc. Scenery is relatively cheap and don’t be afraid to be creative with it. DCC doesn’t have to be bought right away (and can be ugraded incrementally).

Don’t rush things, just enjoy the process. And while you are snapping a billion photos of the kid, take a few of the layout as you progress!

8

Just wanted to add my congratulations on the new engineer!

A couple of other tips. First, keep your MR or other subscriptions if you have them. I let mine run out and missed completely the development of DCC. When I came back to the hobby, it really surprised me.

Second, hang out in the forums. They really help you feel connected, even though you may not have much time for your own modeling. You will find a lot of support from the people who have already gone through what you are about to experience or are right there with you, battling the same battles.

Again, congratulations!.

Tom

9

Well being in N scale is a good thing, takes up less space and you can do a lot in a small area. I’d say it’s important to remember you CAN spend huge amounts on model railroading, but you don’t HAVE to. John Allen used to tell people (when they asked how much his layout cost) that he figured he spent the same amount of money on it that he would have spent on cigarettes if he were a smoker. Remember a lot of “Great Model Railroads” were built over a couple of decades, a little at a time.

Also, use this time for research. You might be surprised how many RR books are available at your local library. When I was without layout (or job) in the eighties for a time, I checked out over a year or two basically every book the local library had on railroads and model railroading. I think my layouts since then were better for the reading.

BTW you’ll probably be buying a new digital camera and / or videocam to take pics of the baby, I’m sure the wife will understand that you need to take the cameras to your local railfan hotspots…to test them out and learn how to use them properly so you can take great pics of the baby of course!! [:D]

10

Rob,

Congratulations on the start of your new ‘journey’. Kids take up ‘time’, and by the time you get them to bed and clean up the house, you just want to go to bed! I did it the hard way; I got divorced when my son was 4 years old, and I had custody! That and a full time professional job ate up most of my time. My modeling suffered for about 5 years, but when he was 9 or 10, we could do model train things together. He even attended his first NMRA National meet in 1997 when he was 13. He will be 23 in June, and moved back in with me while he works full time at Mayo Clinic and attends college. The time raising him went very fast, and is something I am very proud of.

Take the modeling ‘in stride’. Work on a single train project. When we have time and money available, we tend to buy lots of stuff and have multiple projects under construction. We all have had the workbench so full of half completed projects! I picked up Athearn GP9’s and rebuilt them one at a time as funds permitted. for my basic roster of engines(Milw Road branchlines). These ran for years until the mid 90’s when the P2K engines came out and my finances improved. I also sold off lots of stuff I bought on a whim, and really had no use for. All of this revenue was put back into the hobby, and financed several layout projects. I was able to spend very little ‘family’ money on the hobby.

Since you are married, do not take advantage of your spouse and bury yourself building trains, while she is ‘baby sitting’ upstairs. You have to devote time to the kids and the wife - there is really no way out of it. Sports, Boy Scouts, and Church activities will become a very big part of your life.

Jim

11

For many, many of us, the answer was to drop out of the hobby. I was at least far-sighted enough to pack everything away and cart it around from apartment to apartment, and finally to our house.

As we go through life, our interests change. We’re fortunate to live in an age where the average person does have liesure time, although it never seems like enough. I really didn’t have time for trains until a few years ago, when my own daughter reached that point where she didn’t want us around so much. Believe me, if you have to choose between your trains and going to your kid’s soccer, baseball, football, swimming, lacrosse, skiing, field hockey, (insert others here) games and meets, pick the sports every time. It’s a blink of an eye between Baby’s First Christmas and that Learner’s Permit. The trains will still be there after she’s gone. And you may have to put them away again when she moves back in!

12

Congratulations!

If you are willing to let it slide for a couple of months, I believe that you will only find yourself missing the hobby for a short time after your baby is available to cuddle. First, your wife will be highly dependant on you for support, for physical assistance with the child, and for generally being “around”. You must not try to find ways to distance yourself, to disassociate. You two are in this together (the very least this young person should expect from its parents), so your railroading may have to slide for a short while.

What will happen if you are a typical dad is that you will want to bond, to get to know this new person, and that means a lot of attention and time for the first 2-6 months. This seems like quite a wide range (?), but every child has unique needs in a combination. For example, if you child is colicky, or won’t tolerate milk products, you and the Mrs. will have to adjust, and to help the baby to survive. A baby that is in gas pain due to upset stomach will cry incessantly, and that can be unnerving @ 0230 for the fifth night in a row.

So, forget the trains when the time seems right, and you will be very busy. Then, some time after maybe 10 weeks, you guys will begin to feel more comfortable, have more confidence, establish some sort of a routine, and that is when any of us begins to think about hobbies. You will be no different.

As for dollars, set aside 10-15 dollars every week just for MRR…by agreement, of course. That way, by the time your child is one year old, you will have saved at least $120, and if you are sensible, will have saved about twice that for your child’s advanced education. Double the child’s fund very year until they leave highschool.

Your hobby is always going to depend on discretionary income. Your wife’s discretion, that is.

13

Some very good advice offered here. I can’t add much except to relate my personal experience. In the late 70’s, while recovering from surgery, I got interested in the hobby. Over a year or so, I assembled about 25 Athearn and Roundhouse freight cars - at the time they cost anywhere from $2.50 -$8.00 each. Then I put them in a box and forgot about them for the next 28 years. A little over a year ago, I was cleaning the garage crawl space and guess what I found. They needed some upgrading but they were pretty much intact.

The amazing thing is that I didn’t even miss them in all those years, being so busy raising a family and doing all the associated activities - as well as earning a living. Between finding those cars and my wife prodding me to put up my childhood trainset at Christmas, I caught the bug again - and here I am, jumped in with both hands and both feet.

A little regret for having not played with trains all those years, but then I was busy doing other things that were important. At least now I have a little financial leeway to do things the way I would like to. Be patient, do what you can and keep things in perspective.

Good luck and welcome to the forum.

14

First things first congratulations to you and you Mrs.

When I had 2 rug rats at home my wife and I would still get our quality hobby time in when the kids was asleep or playing with their toys…Of course when these rug rats became yard apes they had they playmates over to play…When these yard apes became teenagers they was “hanging with their friends” more then they was at home…When these teenagers became adults things went back to normal starting with rug rats we called Grand kids.

The moral of the story is take time out for your and your wife’s “quality” time because once you have kids life isn’t the same and you both will need “time outs”.

15

Congratulations!

You will have some decisions to make with this hobby in mind. Unless you HATE the Hobby, keep all of your stuff, move it when needed as suggested previously and most of all, hope and pray that one of your children want to join the hobby with you.

My wife and I had three children. All grown and gone now. Between my Military Service and moves with them, and then 2 different houses since the Military it’s been a long lay-off from a Hobby. It’s “my” time to pick back up a hobby and I came back to trains and I am so glad I did. My kids only liked the Train during Christmas around the tree. That’s all I did for many years. Some old steel track and one lonely Athearn Blue Box GP38-2 and some crappy box cars with hook horn couplers.

Since I’ve been back at it, I now have a Grand Son. He is so into Cars, Trains, and Planes that he’s the spitting image of me, and BOY do I love the time I share with him! So much of my stuff is new because of him. I take him to my LHS and the owner knows my little guy by name. We chose stuff that is a diferent period than what I thought I was going to get into, but we chose together and we run what we like together, and most of all we have FUN TOGETHER. In my book that is what it’s all about.

Now, I have picked up some very nice stuff. This is PaPa’s stuff and the Little guy knows we only run it on special occasions. For the most part, if he asks for it, it will be his one of these days.

It took me a long time to get to this point, but, it’s been worth it to me, and I have someone to share it with that loves it as I do.

Chris

P.S.

Yep, I still have that old Blue Box, going on 30 years right now…

16

Ah children!! I think the words of Ira Bombeck sum it up best, “It will grow back, dear”, talking about the lawn the kids trampled into dirt numerous times.

Congratulations on your expected bundle of joy, you are in for a life time of memories and momentous life changing events. The first may have already become obvious in your reltionship with your wife and her new state. Pay close attention to her needs, after all this is a partnership you both entered into willingly. When the baby arrives, there are several stages that transpire that you MUST participate in, after all your wife cannot do all the baby chores alone. Take heart, you have the strenght to get through this, both of you. There is a very special bond that takes place in couples as they raise off spring that makes us both better human beings. One of the benefits of being a good Dad and husband is the free pass to go railfanning or some modelling time as a reward for being a better human being, husband and father.

Rome was not built in a day, and your modeling can be approached in smaller steps and on a budget, if only putting pennies away at a time. Keep your interest in the hobby alive but not obsesive. Tommorow, next week, next month will fly by, leaving you wondering where they went. The advise to shift to smaller, less expensive, less time consuming aspects of the hobby is excellent.

Lastly, enjoy fatherhood and marriage for the next several years, we all will be here when you are ready to return with more time and funds!

Will

17

Congrats on the soon-to-be li’l engineer. The green light is on for many wonderful hours of enjoyment ahead.

By all means, keep the family trains traditions going. I have my model railroad “museum” on shelves over my work tables. Oldest is a live steam engine my grnad dad made in the mid 1920’s. Some of my Dad’s models are up there with my earliest model trains.

Some advice on modeling. I’ve moved many times (17 times within 7 states). I’ve lost count of how many layouts I’ve ripped aprt before they were anywhere near completion. Therefore, I suggest that layouts be constructed in sections that can be disconnected if you move. I’m not saying it has to be modular so it is protable. I’m just saying, the alyout should be constructed so it could be moved.

18

Kid-proof your work area! Once those buggers get their walking legs, your posessions become their toys. This became the fate of one finished structure left unguarded - open doors, chimneys, vents, quickly get picked off by curious little fingers. Another reason for 50" benchwork and a child-proof lock on the basement door.

By the way, I got my bench work done in '99, that’s about where its at still. Two kids, can you guess what year the first was born?

19

Everyone’s situation is totally different so it is difficult what to say. For starters I have 7 children. My first batch is just begining to finish college and move away from home. College is what really gets expensive so save a bit now. Anyway I would like to echo some things already stated.

I have made trains a part of raising kids. I use model railroads as part of their education (especially if one home schools). I take my children with me when I go railfanning. The younger ones almost enjoy it more than I do.

It doesn’t do any good to buy anything that you can use later. If the item can’t be used and enjoyed right now, don’t buy it. Otherwise one ends up with a pile of really neat stuff that is often obsolete by the time they can use it. Consider those who stockpiled brass track, CTC-16 equipment, or even locomotives with open frame motors to “use” later, like when they retire.
I always shop the clearance sales, and I mean really good clearance sales. 10-15% off is not a sale. 20-35% off is a normal street price. I get interested in the 50-65% off range, and love the Hobby Lobby 75%+ off rack. I picked up a bunch of track there once for a dime on a dollar. I just (today) went to my hobby shop and they had locomotives (SW8) with factory installed DCC and sound for $99. I know it limits what one can do - right now, but in another way it makes it more interesting.
Our local NMRA division has a swap meet once every two months. Not only is it fun to attend, there are some really good deals. As for layouts, consider joining a club. &nbs

20

Truthfully, I don’t know how those with huge layouts do it either.

I’m a relatively new Dad also, my boy will be a year and a half old this week. Have I done much MRR’ing since he’s been with us? Not really. But I have been enjoying life immensely!

I do plan on starting a layout. (haven’t had one since I was a kid).

For me, a layout will simply be more of a “place to run some trains”. You won’t see me having 3 hour long operating sessions, etc. I’ll have a small switching layout, with an option for continuous running.

Will my layout be like the huge layouts featured in Model Railroad Planning? No. But I do think I could build something very satisfying. The hobby for me will consist more of 10 minute “bites” here and there.

The truth is, that’s totally fine with me. I don’t want it to be an all-encompassing thing in my life. There are too many things going on in life to have a hobby be a huge full-blown committment.

You should also note there have been some very fine small layouts featured in MR over the years. Those are my personal inspiration. I will never be a “super hero” in model railroading, but I do hope my son will see me as one! (well, until he’s a teenager and realized I’m just dad!).