With my birthday coming up shortly, my dear wife wanted to take me out to the LHS this past Saturday to pick up a reference book that I’ve had my eye on for some time now:
New York Central Facilities In Color, by Geoffrey H Doughty (Morning Sun Books)
Although it’s a very beautiful looking and informative book, at $60 for 128 pages, I could never really quite rationalize buying it for myself.
Well, after grabbing a bite to eat at a vegatarian Indian restaurant for lunch, we arrived at the hobby store about mid-afternoon. This particular LHS has a terrific RR and military reference section that takes up one side of the store. And books pretty much go from floor to ceiling. (If you are a RRing geek, you could literally get lost in that section of the store for hours.)
We found the above mentioned book and proceeded to browse the plethora of other reference books they had there. I enjoyed perusing through the MEC, B&A, B&M, and New York, Susquehanna & Western RR books - in particular, the B&A and MEC RRs, which had a number of pictures of ball signals that were still being used on those lines back in the 50s.
While I was enjoying my new findings, my wife - who enjoys reading and has recently developed a keen interest in history - was browsing through some of the New York Central locomotive books. At one point, she turned to me and said somewhat emphatically, “WE need to get a book on the history of the New York Central!”, followed by a long enough pause that silently implied, “Don’t you think that would be a good idea?” Having been married to this woman for nearly 15 years, I knew that she was serious. But I still had a difficult time keeping myself from laughing out loud.
The history of the NYC was actually pretty reasonably priced. But, after seeing
That’s great that you can get your wife interested in the hobby. Keep it up and you’ll be running the Pennsylvania RR next to the NYC!..ha!..All I get out of my wife is when I show her something I built or done on the RR is “that’s nice dear” and off she goes doing her own thing. But it’s not all that bad.
She will buy me train stuff at Christmas , birthdays…ect…We went to the LHS this weekend together and she bought me a set of Sealand 40’ containers. She always buys me containers when we go to the LHS. Probably because she works at the port of Houston and that’s as far as her interest in the hobby goes.
She’s greatful I’m into the hobby though…She tells me it keeps me from chasing skirt and out of the bars. She didn’t even flinch when I wrote a check to the LHS for $253.00 and some odd cents…But then again, I had to take her to the mall afterwards for her to shop until she dropped, so I guess we’re even…chuck
It’s funny you should mention running the PRR next to the NYC. My wife and I had a chance to take a short road trip recently to the east central area of Ohio.
My wife loves water. Even though we live within a few miles of Lake Erie, I thought it might be nice to visit some place different. After perusing the Internet, I found that there was a good size lake (Tappen) located about 30 miles SSE of Canton. From Cleveland, it’s about an 1 hour and 45 min. drive down I-77, then SE along SR 250.
Along the way, my wife was consulting a book that we had just bought about unique places to visit in the state of Ohio. I told her that we would be driving past Dennison, OH, where I mistakenly thought Denison University was located, and where a friend of ours from church had attended college. (I found out later that Denison University is actually located just east of Columbus.)
Anyhow, my wife looks up Dennison in the travel book and discovers that there is a railroad depot museum in downtown Dennison. I had not planned on visiting any RR related things on our trip, so I asked my wife if she wanted to stop by and check it out. She said that she was up to it. When we arrived, we discovered that the depot had undergone a $1M renovation and that they were having the grand opening to the new wing of their museum that very day.
In the process of going through the museum, we discovered that:
The PRR (now Norfolk Southern), primarily, and B&O RRs went E → W through Dennison.
WWI and WWII troop trains used to briefly stop in Dennsion on their way to Europe.
Local folks used to bring their homemade goodies, candies, and fruit down to the depot in order to pass them out FREE to the service men and women coming through. With stops averaging only 5 min. or so, the exchange between the canteen workers and the service men was brief and sometimes hectic. Even so, the t
My wife has us building a garden railroad, and last night she was talking about her own HO layout! Holy cow! My wife may be competing for my layout space!!
Eight to ten months ago we were in the local hobby shop (Sattler’s in NJ), when she saw an HO Proto-2000 Atlantic Coast Line E8. She loved the color scheme, and I woulnd up buying it for her. At this point she has an entire ACL passenger train (although I still haven’t put a decoder into the loco - it’s an older P2k, so is not DCC-ready. Right now it runs behind one of my CB&Q heavy Mikes).
Meanwhile, the garden railroad was going to be a 3’ Colorado narrow gauge style asrrangement, complete with Lagas Creek 3’-gauge track (expensive but very realistic looking) and all rolling stock in 1:20.3 scale (the scale in which G gauge track is 3’). We have a Spectrum Mogul in that scale, but no other rolling stock - until Saturday, anyway. At the York PA Garden train show, she saw a USA Trains ACL F3, and had to have it. No more Colorado narrow gauge! Now we’ll go with the standard gauge stuff in the slightly smaller scale (wherein G scale track is standard gauge). I was looking forward to narrow gauge in the garden, but what the heck - at least the track is cheaper! And it is HER layout.
And to think that, when we got married a few years ago, I was worried that she would think I spend too much time on the trains. Guess I’ll get that decoder in her E8 this week…
Then again I came home with a new loco the other day after going to the train show and she just laughed and said “I figured as much” . We are truly blessed men[:)]
My wife thought trains were a dumb waist of money. It made more sense to her to spend MY money on 3 sewing machines,material,yarn, thread, ect…ect…and then in 7 years NEVER touch the stuff. (not even once!) When I kicked her out, she went to take the sewing machines and I said NO WAY! I payed for them. I’m keeping them. (she was PISSED!) I sold them and bought a couple of Athearn locos. To this day, those are my 2 favorite locos to run![:D] (they kind of sound like the sewing machines though)
See!!! You guys “can” learn as old dogs!!! My wife like to shop at the many craft stores in Sturbridge, Ma ( as well as a few other stores too ). So when I go to my favorite LHS in Warren, Ma, we go for breakfast at a log cabin in Brookfield Flats, then I park the car so that she can see the CSX freights that pass right ahead of her in Warren while I take my time inside. Then, we go to Sturbridge for shopping and a nice dinner. Sometimes we go to the Steaming Tender, the old Train Station in Palmer, Ma, the hotspot of New England where 7 RR’s cross, now 4, and eat by the window while CSX trains pass by only 15 feet away.
IT works guys, it works !!! Make them part of the action !!
TOM, MEC and B&A books?? WOW, I would like to see what he has !!!
I know how ya feel… I was browsing thru one of my favorite N scale suppliers online & once I showed this to my wife, she JUST HAD to make sure I ordered it ! Something about women & Coke I guess…lol.
Hey, guys, I am the wife. In the beginning, we spent all of our layout time together. Now that I am only working 2 days per week, guess who spends the most time with the layout. I do feel guilty that alot of other things go undone.[sigh]
Boy are you going to have fun! I have put a decoder (sound no less) into an older Proto ACL E-8. It was for my daughter (she liked the color scheme too) and I wanted it running on the new layout (DCC) when she came over.
It can be done and keep the lighting, including the gyro light. However, you do need to “adjust” some of the parts on the existing circuit board. Great soldering fun. This was a couple years ago, so there are smaller sound units out there now, making installation easier. Still, there isn’t a lot of spare room in there, especially if want to keep the original lighting functions.
Just last night, my wife said she was going to make new curtains for our upstairs bathroom (it has a train theme with some railroad signs, etc.)… lo’and behold, she made some curtains with TRAINS on them and was so proud about them!!! Gotta love the supportive wife, who every now and then, surprises you… Makes you realize how lucky you (we) are.
Hehehe…nice story! I hope one day she will also want to do an operation session with you too!
I am also pretty lucky, my wife supports me with my hobbies…she goes with me to LHS to pick up die-cast planes and stuff but still yet to be interested in trains but I am sure once my Layout MKII is built, she will want to ‘play’ with it! LOL
So far she has taken interest in most of my hobbies including target shooting and got pretty good at it too! She came third in Women’s Division in the club last year!
I read some of the posts to my wife this morning. I thought I might get her into the basement to help work on the backdrop. She told me all the ways I really didn’t need her help.
I guess it’s just like that guy wrote in the book that men and women are inherently different. What was that title again? Oh yeah…
