Rambling towards Club Thoughts

Please forgive the back story, I did not mean to ramble quite so much.

I was once an associate member of the ill fated and now defunct(so far as I know) Fort Worth and Midcities model railroad club. I was 15 or so. The club layout consisted of a large number of modules strung together in a simple loop, with a single staging yard running the length of one side. At the time I couldn’t have imagined a better arrangement. Later on the arrangment evolved quite a bit, eventually there was a much more robust yard, and an elbow had been put in the entire loop. Sadly by then I had for various reasons found my attention pointed in other directions. I was some what fortunate then that I was not as emotionally involved in the club when it disintegrated virtually without warning. I won’t get into why here.

Thereafter model railroading passed out of thought and mind for many years. I became happily employed, moved out of my parents home, and carried on relatively merrily and not particularly concerned with the future. One day as I was taking my lunch and wandered a bit. As I trundled along one road I was suddenly struck with deja vu, as though I had been there before. I was struck by the feeling several times over the following weeks until I realized I had actually been there before. At addison road and Ratcliff there is a hobby shop called Discount Model trains. On a whim I went in loitered a bit and made the mistake of leaving with a Model Railraoder. The cover was the layout of George Sellios, any other month’s offerings and I probably would not have been impressed.

I continued to vist the hobby shop, it was a relief from the frustration of work and in short order I found myself making a number of purchases starting with a Proto 2000 Heritage 0-6-0. I think I was 24 or 25 by this point. By now though I was a bit more sophisticated. I wanted more than just pretty trains and track work. I bought several books about operation both mainline and yard operation and started imagi

Welcome to the world of model railroading.

There are many module groups around. I have been a member of one for 6 years now. There has to be some kind of standard so each module can connect to each other. Each member makes their own module or in my case modules. We have 2 continuous main lines and a third main that’s used for divergence from the mains. There are a multitude of industries and yards from the third main. Yes when all the modules are hooked up we get the patchwork scheme of sights.

There is also Freemo modular clubs that adhere to a set theme.

Start your own Freemo club if you would like. Or join a modular group. Either way you go you will have to adhere to some sort of standards.

Pete

My 55-year-old baby sister rambles alot too. To mark each “chapter” of her never-ending conversational stories, she uses the expression “to make a long story short.”

An example of rambling was her description of the car accident my 90-year-old father was in last week. In explaining how she heard about the accident (a very circuitous line of communication) she started to describe the physical and mental issues of a relative of my dad’s slightly-hurt girlfriend (22 stitches). I said “Rosalie, I’m not interested in the relative’s problems now, talk about Dad’s and his girlfriend’s condition!”

Welcome to the forum!

Mark

Welcome. You have come to a good place to get started. You didn’t say if you were still in the Fort Worth area or had moved. Put your location in and you might get some more responses. Also, check out “model railroad groups” under Rescources at the top of this page to find out if there are groups in your area. Also, check with your LHS to see if they can direct you to a local group. You could also leave your name and tell the clerk that it is alright for them to give it to people in the hobby. That way the clerk is not giving you names of folks who may not want to be contacted, but gives them the opportunity to contact you if they are interested.

Good luck,