Hi Guys
Does anybody find trains a great way to escape the Day to Day troubles, I find that when Im having a bad day at work or bad week for that matter that I go in my train room shut the door and run a few trains. It may not make your day a whole lot better but I feel It helps.
Jeremy
How right you are.
I look forward to building something, all day long.
Once all the chores are done, there’s nothing better than doing a bit modelling to relieve that stress
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Jon
You’re right [:)]. When ever I have a bad day, I go to my basement and watch the trains do a few laps (on the floor) [:(!]. Can’t wait to get that plywood…
When I’m done with the electrical aspect of my layout then it will more stress relieving
My motto?
A bad day in the basement is better than a good day at work! [:D]
that’s just one of the few ways I have to relieve stress, particularly during exam season. (the other way is cartoons!)
I find working on or running my railroad to be an easy way to relieve stress unless I am trying to replace a knukle spring in a Kadee #5, darn there when another one!!!
Jerry
it helps. i enjoy coming on the forums and just browsing and responding to things. that helps me relieve stress. i can’t really run my trains as the pieces of particle board i have is 3x5 feet so i can’t even put a 18" radius on it. my dad found 3 pieces of it in our garage and i was just going to set up a loop to just run the trains but nope i can’t even do that. all i have is a 5 foot straight section with the locomotive and 3 cars on it and just go forward and back. that is better than nothing. my dad is trying to get wednseday off so we can get plywood and build the bench work so i can start putting down track. once i can actually run a train continuously it’ll be a great stress reliever.
@flyingscot: how about railroad cartoons? www.toytrunkrailroad.com
Total agreement here, nothing takes stress away from me more than model railroading. Too bad my wife doesn’t see it this way
Gordon
I find them so relaving I became addicted. Its now my hobby, my chosen career (Via my business), a big aspect of the relationship with my girlfirend, and if it gets amy more perfect, I will be able to shrink my self down and see my layout from the perspective of my little pink plastic people.
James.
I understand the wife factor, but one of my sons loves trains and if he is helping me or just wants to watch the trains then my wife does not care that I am spending time with the trains and not with her.
I have to agree that this hobby is a great stress relief, but it can be stressful when something does not work right, but what isn’t.
Greg
There is such a thing as positive stress–stress from good things, like spending a ton of time to reach some great goal (like an operating model railroad.) But just because it’s stress doesn’t mean it isn’t still positive–and working out challenging problems in an enjoyable hobby teaches strategies to deal with stress that we don’t necessarily want to deal with, as well as the art of finding innovative solutions.
In the case of replacing springs on Kadee couplers, the solution is Kadee’s Spring-Pic, a two-buck piece of plastic that shrinks half an hour of squinting, cursing, losing and bending springs to ten seconds of fiddling with the coupler. Highly recommended.
Trains are a total release for me. I have other tension-release methods like live performance which are a little more visceral (as odd as it sounds, bouncing around on stage in devil makeup, hitting large metal objects with sledgehammers and power tools and occasionally setting my chest hair on fire with fireworks duct-taped to my body leaves me with a sense of total peace and serenity afterwards) but model railroading is satisfying and engaging for pretty much any period of time. During the years I spent away from the hobby I tried other hand-crafty oriented things, including leatherwork, computer building & upgrading, and a little bit of jewelry making, but none of it was as much fun as playing with the darned trains.
When everything is running right (and the Kato UniTrak helped that), I love watching the two trains, one on the inner loop, the other on the outter loop slowly (say 35-45 mh) passing the other. I could run halfway to the Mississippi from Chicago!
Nothing breaks that like track coming apart or a derailment, having a car break loose and emergency stop.
When I tire, I swap the train on the outer loop with inner, nearly like a saw by, since I often have to remove some cars to get them to fit both on the outer loop.
Other times I get in the car and ride the old highways along the rail towns.
[:)] Tinkering with the trains greatly relieves my stress levels. When the evil outside world really starts to get to me ([}:)]), I REALLY enjoy escaping the hassles by doing something, anything, relating to trains. Gimme an hour with my trains and somehow the world seems okay again–until the next wave of lunacy hits…
there is only one better!
trains right now is still competeing with playing baseball. nothing to me is better than playing baseball on a hot July night. nothing is better than that. baseball is in my blood. i live to play that game. hopefully come college i’ll be able to keep playing then after that fall back on trains for a hobby. that and bowling.
just being at my friends house and watching his trains was the best thing i could have done last friday. just being able to watch the trains go was a blast.
I don’t have a layout , my enjoyment comes from kitbashing or detailing and painting HO loco’s , it keeps the hand eye coordination going and this helps me with playing guitar which is my ultimate stress reliever , but working on a model is very stress relieving and makes no noise so it works for me late in the evening and the final finished loco is a achievement that is there to see .
Anything is better for me than watching a fence for 8 hours.
I feel that modeling a railroad is a little stress in itself but is
a good learning experience when I get the hang of a new
way to model. My relief is knowing I have something to show for
at the end of a day. I am not a smoker, drinker,etc. and praise god
for good health right now.I love and enjoy my trains everyday, and
can escape for a few moments when I am with them.