At work,I tend to push others to join the model railroading group. I understand that different strokes for different folks saying.But really are other hobbys as cool as model railroading ? Where else can you be a master of your own world ? The best thing about are hobby is you can build,the electrical work,kits,scratch build prototypes and the most rewarding of all…leave all the stress behind. Some people are depend on happy pills,to make them happy. Not me,just give me some kits and I’ll build an empire. I mean really …what a great hobby,in fact its the only hobby that demands nothing in return. I wish I could get my wife and son involved. I even thought about ,building a small layout and taking it to retirement homes,to give the fellows something to enjoy besides Matlock re-runs. Thought about the VFW also or the American legion a small layout. Schools are also a target,so is anywhere else to push others into this hobby. Some of them are bound to embrace model railroading,while others keep shunning it away. Is this to much of a gorillo tactic ? Whats you view on this,I’d like to know what you think ?
I think it is a great idea. It would be the best way to get younger modelers in this great hobby of ours. It will also get the adults in the hobby. I say if you want to do it, go ahead.
Great Idea, especially for nursing home residents.
I’ve visited several over the past two decades and the situation is often heartbreaking! A permanent scenicked layout would likely be welcome by most of the residents. However, in today’s lawsuit hungry society, managers would worry about the potential challenges (trains can hurt fingers on tracks or injure feet and ankles should an HO or O scale locomotive derail along the edge, etc). A plexi-glass type enclosure would probably be needed (fortunately plexiglass is pretty cheap now). Then there would be the question as to who would maintain the layout? Would it be volunteers? If a powerpack or locomotive burns out due to a powersurge or lightning strike, who will come in and make it right?
Now, If it is a “traveling, movable layout” that you will take with you, will your presentations be a same day event, or will you leave the layout for a few days or a week? If so, again the liability issues pop up.
I don’t want to discourage you but just suggesting that you keep some of the potential issues in mind. If this were 1977, the situation would be a “no-brainer”.
As for schools and youth groups, there is good potential. In my Church, just before our Pathfinder Youth Director passed away this summer (great guy, too), he asked me to conduct a model railroad class for the kids as the interest was there. This really surprised me as I thought the kids were only into their cell phones and I-Pods! Taught me a lesson about listening to young folks.
After giving it some serious thought…if you want to do this then go for it! Do your research and ask the groups that you think you’d want to do this for,whether it’s a transportable layout or if you want to help build a permanent one for a group. Let them know of your intentions, how you are promoting the hobby and stimulating minds at the same time, and ask about the liability i
Interesting topic, put yourself in others shoes for a minute, here is a guy pushing me to join a group of guys to play with and sit around and discuss toy trains ! ! now these are big strapping “sports fans” who’s idea of doing something is inhaling beer, eating crap and watching games on t.v. then discussing the game for weeks after, and you want to convert these guys over to doing something creative??? good luck ! ! ! You must realize how many people out there have no hobbies or any interest in anything, I just thought of some of my friends, not one has any outside interest in anything, so you cannot even discuss anything with them , 99% do not even read a book or magazine, nice people, good friends but none of them even know I have a model train, I would dare to say 95% of people out there have no hobbies and very few do anything but shop for stuff (shopping is NOT a hobby)
So don’t be discouraged, but you will find great resistance for recruiting anyone into the ranks of model railroading. Remember, these are the future guys sitting in the retirement homes staring out the window 12 hours a day, don’t feel too bad for them, they were like that when they were 24. Now you know how important hobbies are.ESPECIALLY model railroading.
I have become very devoted to, and consumed by, a number of passtimes and interests, and I look back, now with more wisdom, and mentally thank each of the people who patiently indulged my endless hours of describing how much I liked each of those activities. Now, however, I try not to come on too strong…if you know what I mean. People need their space and time. If they had wanted to explore hobbies, and trains in particular, they probably would have done so long ago.
Some want lots of TV, some railroad discussion groups (yes, please!), some National Geographic memberships, some growing a rare variety of Quinoa,…you get it. I say, let Homer be Homer. Bugging people at work about your passion is risky. Getting permission to set up your portable layout at the local mall will garner the interest that it deserves, I am sure. If you get new desciples, good for you!
Hey Patrick, good to hear from you.
… I don’t understand other people’s hobbies either, and that’s fine
my wife does scrapbooking memory albums - I “get” that (sort of) and have even done a few pages of my own … don’t understand the BUTTONS thing at all though, (and she likes the trains but can’t figure out my “skunk” collection - so I guess we’re even)
I just keep my hobby out of work - they know where to find me on Sat, at the club layout
my neighbour does the Remote Control Airplanes - that is great to watch, and my kids also love that. Neighbour keeps letting the engines drop out of the sky (scares the dog), and landing in the bush on my property - we’ve recovered a few of the black boxes (approx $50 each) out of
Patrick,Although your cause is Nobel I am afraid you are wasting your time…Until the general public realizes that WE ARE NOT IMMATURE ADULTS PLAYING WITH TOY TRAINS then we will make headway.Until that day arrives and it hasn’t arrive in the 54 years I been in the hobby the general public will understand our love and passion for trains…
Patrick,
People think differently. Some folks just have no interest in trains. Some
people don’t have time for hobbies. Some people have other hobbies and
interest. I don’t think you can “push” someone to like anything that they are
not ready to like.
As Brakie says, it’s a noble cause, but a pointless one if the people you
are trying to recruite just aren’t interested. On the hand, you will probably
introduce the hobby to some kids who might never had come in contact
with it otherwise.
So, I guess what I am trying to say is… Talk to people about trains. But,
if they show no interest, then you you probably won’t change their minds
by push it on them. True modelers and trai
My definition of our hobby… Yours may differ, that’s fine, this is mine…
In the simplest terms a model railroad is a toy. That’s right, I said a toy. Granted an expensive and very involved toy, but a toy none the less. That said here is my take on the subject. What is a toy? The best toys are the ones that allow us to be creative in some form. There is no more creative hobby on the face of this earth than Model Railroading. It allows one to be a collector, a planner, a carpenter, an architect, a model builder, a sculptor, an electrician, an electrical engineer, a mechanical engineer, a civil engineer, and a painter (there are many others but you get the point). That doesn’t even touch on the jobs that can be simulated while operating the MR. The best part of this toy is, you can get as involved as you like with any part of it while staying completely away from others.
I just may be lucky, but I have never been ridiculed or been made fun off by the hobby of model railroading. Instead, I have made many friends, gotten ‘freebies’ and have seen things I would have never had the chance to see by telling everyone I’ve met about my interests. I live in the Washington, D.C. area and have met many professionals and military personnel who are in the hobby. It’s funny how so many pilots are into trains rather than model airplanes.
The Charlotte Hall Veterans Home in St. Mary’s Co. just advertised in the local newspaper that some of their members want to start a model railroad club.
The owner of a large lumber and hardware store is building a large display model railroad right in the middle of his store. I’ve been helping him with that. Most of the people coming into the store are in the construction trades and all have had good words of encouragement and are very interested in the layout’s progress.
Everyone that I worked with knew I was ‘into’ trains as does everyone where my wife works. She is a secretary at the local high school and I’ve had to entertain the principal and a good number of teachers at my house who wanted to see the layout.
Maybe it’s the fact that I live in a larger metro area, but it’s surprising how many people are interested in trains and model railroading.
I’ve always been a “outdoors, sports minded” type of person, I play baseball, golf once in awhile, hunt, fish, ATV almost every other weekend, love drag racing my Trans Am and going to car shows and just about everything else you can do outdoors. I’m also one of those beer drinking, hockey watching Canadians that you here about all the time. When a few of my friends found out I was building a layout in the basement they all thought I was going crazy, lol. Playing with trains just wasn’t their idea of having fun, or so they thought. Once they discovered that these toy trains weren’t toys at all and how much effort and skill is involved they soon changed their minds. Now a few of them are going to the train shows with me and even planning their own layouts. I didn’t push MRR on any of them, they came to me. Pushing anything on anybody I believe will turn people away, no matter what it is.
It’s not really something you can “push” people into. I would be worried about “sue happy” parents thinking your a perv for wanting their kids to play with trains. Where I live, it makes MUCH more sence to spend 20 grand on a bass boat and 30 grand on a truck to haul it to catch fi***hat cost $3.99/lb.(don’t get me wrong. I LOVE to fish) Now don’t get me started on what it costs to kill a dear as a hobby. (who’s meat tastes terrable).
Those are the “hobbies” that make sense to the folks where I live.But trains??? Those are just stupid!!!(maybe a Skoal train with gonds filled with wintergreen might get some attention?)
Gee, Loathar … seems like you have chip on your shoulder. Are you sure you want to live in Tenn. with these people? Lol.
I’m looking for ways to get that $20K boat this spring, for fishing and skiing and exploring with my kids. But I also have this incurable model train bug, and I’ve put alot of money into it. But I’m selling off all my nice new train stuff, before I even got the chance to build my small, but intense, layout this winter. My sons are just not into trains like they used to be. I have to put the train stuff on hold for some years.
And the deer meat that you hate? I’ll be in the woods way before sunrise Monday when buck season opens (Praying for snow Sunday night). I’ll save you the tendorloin, grilled to perfection in my back yard, and we’ll just see how it tastes (takes a while, though, grilling when its 20 degrees).
So, you see, there are redneck model railroaders out there… like me. Lol.
Well, got to run, Dukes of Hazzard is coming on. I wonder what that dang Boss Hogg got up his sleeve today.
Jim
PS…Loathar … Frank says “Watch out where the huskies go, and don’t you eat that yellow snow”
That got a lot of response. I ran a club layout in a school for troubled youth once. It was very useful for a few but the horses served a larger group. The downside was the constant maintainence to keep it going enough to serve its purpose. If I get to a nursing home, I would love such a layout, either permenant like the eternal birdcage, or visiting like the local choir. The problem would be I would not be able to do much on it. If I could still do stuff I would be at home.
I agree with you completetly. I have acutally convinced 2 of my friends to try model railroading and I am always answewring questions. By looking at MR at school, friends tell me “Thats cool” or “neat”, things like that. And I find out that a lot of their parents still have their Lionel trains from when they were kids and that now they have them. It is one great experience!
Trying to pu***he hobbies on others is a good way to loose friends. Pushing anything on anyone is resented, but when it is something that in the genearl publics eye’s as odd, peculiar, immature, nerdy etc you are really banging your head against the wall and risking your own social connections.
Model RR has more value than sitting watching sports, I would agree, to me more satisfying and productive, but hte majority of the populat ion does not and will not feel that way and there is nothing we can do to change that, and why should we anyway. LEt them have theri thing, you have yours.
I learned long ago, not only to not pu***he hobby, but I don’t even let rgular folks know I have any interest in it. I enjoy waht I’m into just hte same and I don’t expose myself to second guesses odd looks and odd questions so everyone is happy.
I enjoy playing hockey and have been considering the idea of starting a team up amongst the guys at the fire dept I am a member of, they also have interest in my street ride (new mustang GT) but no way am I ever going to open myself up and mention I have any slot cars or any interest in railroads.
Different strokes for different folks. The last thing anyone needs to be is a Jehovash’s Witness type stumping for new members int eh railraod community.