A hobby is supposed to “entertain” you, and to “occupy free time” to “Avoid boredom”.
What I ask here, is HOW and WHAT do you enjoy about the hobby as “entertainment”??
This IS NOT one of those bashing threads like the “hobby is too expensive” or the “hobby is dying”!!! There seems to be enough of those already! Cheap or expensive, self-indulged or professionally built for you, we can all enjoy the hobby as “entertainment”. HOW Do you?
For instance, I like to build kits during the long dark cold winter months while TV is playing in the background. They provide me some “creativity outlets”, keeps my “fine motor skills” going and gives my eyes a workout. I enjoy the “creative outlet” part the most. I can create something fascinating out of a few plastic preplanned parts by painting, weathering and detailing it with the “little things” that make all the difference {now If I could do it as good as “a la Bob Gretch”…[sigh] }
I can also occupy my “free time” just watching the trains go round and round and round on my small layout… I switch the consist together, then run 'em, then de-consist them for “an hour- hour and a half” before I get “bored”. Many may not like roundy-round-rounders, but I do- I get kinda mesmerized.
SO, HOW and WHAT do you enjoy about the hobby as “entertainment”??
I like the variety of things I can do. If I just want to drift away from reality, I can run some trains around my layout. If I’m feeling creative, I can build some scenery. If I need to get my brain working, I can do some wiring. If I am too tired to do any of that, I can read MR or look around these forums. And if I want some fresh air, I can go out and do some rail fanning.
All up, a pretty good hobby and very entertaining.
I like to do realistic mini scenes based on workaday life that tells a story things like a dumped pallet on a dock,a forklift operator carrying a propane tank,a trucker putting up or down the trailer stand (I reposition the stand on the trailer to do this),a security guard giving directions to a trucker and scenes like that…
“SO, HOW and WHAT [do] you enjoy about the hobby as “entertainment”??”
What?? Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy my day job even after doing it for the past 25 years, but model railroading is a great escape especially on those days when things go pear-shaped.
How?? More than likely"preaching to the converted" but the reason this is such a great hobby is that it is so multi-faceted, so hard to get bored when there are different disciplines to indulge in, so for me it depends on how the mood takes me.
As a personal observation it saddens me when individuals can take themselves and the hobby TOO seriously. Then, in my opinion, its no longer a hobby but an obsession.
As an engineer, I even like to “quantify” the play value of my trains. A DPM or City Classics kit that costs, say, $20, will give me at least 20 hours of pleasure building and placing on my layout, complete with interior, lighting and surrounding scenery. That’s one dollar an hour.
Where else can you get quality entertainment like that for a dollar an hour?
I can relate to all of the above but I do some of the local train shows and it is great to meet others involved in our hobby.I used to belong to 2 clubs but work took me away from that but I never lost the enjoyment it gave me when we moved to a new home with a basement big enough to build my dream layout {52 x 42} and over 20 years of collecting what I wanted and needed. I like having visitors and the grand kids watching the trains run, the comments and the ideas and the inspiration to continue and use the constructive ideas and comments and the WOW you did what I suggested. I have also retired and it is nothing for me to go down and work on something at 5:00 in the morning and come back upstairs at noon and wonder where the day went, I don’t think I"ll ever get bored or lose the hobby spirit, Jim.
I love to build models! And in this hobby in particular, I love to take a kit of a freight or passinger car, build it, add details to my own satisfaction and weather into a nice piece of rolling stock. I used to love to build steam and diesel locomotives from kits, detail, weather and enhance the electrical pick-up and circuitry, install DCC decoders and just generally make the thing work and look as good as I can. As loco kits are no longer available, I have to do this to RTR, now.
I like the engineering and building aspects–from electronics to painting of locos to scenery. I particularly like scratchbuilding cars/buildings and kitbashing as well as improving loco performance. I want to scratch build a brass loco at some point.
This is me, so much more than just running trains… building things, doing scenery, doing wiring, learning DCC, learning about real trains and how a railroad operates… If anything MRR more about other things than just playing trains. Having a train running is the fruit of all the labor.
Like many others, it is the whole ball of wax for me in the design and craftmanship involved.
If I had to pick one aspect it would be the freedom to work out what I want on the layout rather than try to work out nit pick details of a real road. I have never, over the last 50 years and 10 layouts, built one layout of a real extant railroad! I have worked up fantasy roads that might have existed and run motive power common to the regions real railroads that were supposedly bought out of scrapping yards for the short line, on the cheap.
Its been about 100% steam over all these years as steam engiines are complex and readily modifiable to something cool looking that a low end short line might be able to cobble back together from the scrapper’s yards. Yeah, it would be the freedom to really model to create your own personal railroad just like General Palmer did, bit by bit.
The only bow to reality is the thorough study of real roads of the period and the selected geography I’m modeling. The real roads worked OK and since I am planning on using their disgarded old motive power and covering adjacent territory they never broke into, it would be nice to know details about the area, rolling stock and motive power to be had.
After the study, its all about my dreams of my road and how to work it into a plausable reality.
My entertainment is simply running the neat trains we have.
I do not need to plan, dream and build glorious visions, because that is my day job as a practicing design engineer. I simply enjoy running the trains to relax, and perhaps a little bit in part because it takes me back to a better time in life (my childhood) before the cares of job, mortgage, raising children, etc.
I do enjoy trying to do a decent job on scenery. However, I’m certainly not ready to show many photos yet of what I have, because frankly there’s better modelers out there than me and the backdrop painted by my paid artist friend, which the kids love, is a little bold in color and scale compared to what most might choose to have…
Great question and one that I have really pondered. I find that building a model railroad is a relaxing pasttime where no deadlines exist and where I can go into a world of my creation and just have fun. Maybe it’s like being a kid again. Granted there are a few aspects of the hobby that I enjoy far more than others - I like building structures but don’t have the patience for ballasting - I do know that when I am in the basement and it’s quiet - no tv, no outside noise - it can be calming and it’s also a time when I can do my best thinking. So, if using it as an escape, then for me that’s the entertainment value of model railroading.
After a long career in transportation logistics that included planes, trains, ships and trucks I am now retired. My work was at times an adrenalin filled problem solving position. The cost of having a 747 freighter on the tarmac waiting to be loaded or unloaded is huge if delays are incurred. I think this is why I have never been into switching, it reminded me to much of work, I wanted to turn off my brain when I got home. For that reason watching a train ply its way around the layout with a glass of wine in hand I found incredibly relaxing. I think what our days are filled with somewhat reflects on what we like to do when we get home.
Now I have not worked for a while I am enjoying building more, I am even starting to look at my yard (under construction) as more than a place to park trains. People don’t know what they don’t know and that applies to me and model railroading, however as time goes by I surprise myself at times with what I do know and some satisfaction comes from that.
My long term goal is to be a good enough modeler that people will have to look long and hard at a photo to tell if it is real or a model. If this happens or not doesn’t matter though as it is the learning process that is the enjoyable part.
There are times when the train room is left alone for days or weeks but it gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling knowing it is there for me any time I need an escape.
My layout is operational with open grid, on sawn out roadbed. I am now expanding it considerably and get a great sense of achievement with making something I like. Open grid sure takes longer than a table top but its worth it to me. A lot of my track is at different elevations.
Well, if we accept the definition of “entertainment” as, “an aggreeable occupation of the mind,” then I would have to say that for me the very hobby itself is entertainment. I work a full-time deadline-driven job, my wife has gone back to school leaving me primarily in charge at home of our three kids, two dogs, and two cats. I have a hungry mortgage to feed plus another kid in college so I’m perpetually on the edge of insolvency. But when I’m able to disapper into the basement for part of an evening, my trains certainly occupy my mind in a most agreeable manner.
I enjoy taking simple DPM building kits and bringing them to life. I enjoy finding cheap ways to scratchbuild. I enjoy painting and decaling rolling stock. I enjoy making trees. I enjoy making up a couple of trains, setting them in motion, and just sitting back to railfan them. It’s a hobby, and it’s also therapy - it’s a much needed escape from the cares of the 1:1 world upstairs.
I’ll admit a strong temptation to simply post, “All of the above.”
Then I take a hard look at my work.
While I like every phase of model railroading, the one thing that gets the brain into high gear is the prospect of imagineering and building Might have been, but never was,' rolling stock. Some (like the Withuhn-Garratt 4-44-4+4-44-4 triple expansion internally connected duplex monster) will almost certainly remain paper exercises. Others (the Golwe comes to mind) are on the Someday,’ list. The six and seven axle articulated hoppers are standing on rails, ready to carry coal from the colliery to Minamijima.
Now all I have to do is build and lay rails on the rest of the route!
I was told I’m very detail oriented (I think that’s a nice way of saying “retentive about details” and doing this as a hobby allows me to express those tendencies.)
I however take pride in a completed model. Although my modeling skills are mid level at best, I learn more each time I put together a model. Better ways to paint, better ways to glue, better ways to assemble, better ways to detail, better ways to lay track, better ways to weather, better ways to wire and light, better ways to retro convert DC engines to sound.
It’s a never ending learning process and as a result, my work keeps getting better and better and better. It’s very self gratifying.
Like others have said the diversity of the hobby is what I like. I go from repairing a brass steamer to adding sound or lights. Fixing a mechanism, kitbashing, building kits to working on the layout. etc. It all is fun!
I enjoy all of the above. Plus going to train shows. And going rail fanning with a camera. And some light weight electronicking. Say a flicker free caboose marker light project. Or a grade crossing with flashers and gates. My layout is waiting for a structure lighting circuit. Kitbashing train show structures, or rolling stock is good. It’s amazing what you can do for shop worn models with rattle cans. Or, going to the club setup of it’s modular layout for a fine fall weekend down at Clark’s Trained Bears in Lincoln NH. That happens tomorrow.