How Many Have "Left The Hobby" Only To Return At A Later Time?

I do this with posts that include the words "left the hobby" or some variation thereof.  But on a far more serious note, I don't do near as much in the summer as fall and winter due to seasonal obligations in the yard.

I never left the hobby in over 50 years, although it does get placed on hold from time to time when more important things take priority.

The interest is always there.  I can still read related magazines or go through my books.

Rusty

Like Rusty, I've been doing this for 50 years, and never left. There was a 5 year stretch after my cancer diagnosis, that I now refer to as "the dark years" when I didn't want to go downstairs, but the trains were always there.

I never offically left but did pack everything away when I was about 16 when girls were looking more attractive than a K4 Pacific and 57 Chevys were more interesting. But I would always stop and look in hobby shop windows. 

Oh yeah!  Been there, done that.  I had a healthy love of Lionel in my childhood.  For Christmas 1961 I received Lionel's best for that year:  their finest set, which included the venerable Pennsylvania GG1 pulling seven freight cars, Super O track, and the TW transformer.  Over the next few years, I grew an additional collection, saving my allowance to buy one piece at a time.  I took care of everything and had the boxes too.  God-knows what I'd have to pay now to get it all back, because by the time I was fourteen I'd lost all interest and sold it all for next-to-nothing and spent the money on foolish things.

     Fast-forward to 1990.  My brother-in-law talked me into going to a train show with him.  I wasn't really interested, but once we got there and I saw all the 'orange-and-blue', it all came back to me enough to convince myself I "needed" an elderly postwar crane car (no. 6560 I think), to have as a shelf doo-dad and glance at once in a while.

     I've been 'armchair-engineering' a layout ever since, and now that I finally have the room to build it in our new home, all I need is to make my mind up about a track plan.  I'm 64 now and the way I see it, it's never too late.  Hey, there are far worse addictions out there . . . . .

HOPPY

I followed the pattern of starting in childhood, losing interest when cars/girls/college came along and getting back in after the purchase of my first house.  I have plenty of interests, so when I need to take a break from trains, I can switch focus to another hobby or activity and come back to trains when the time is right, but I won't really leave again.

Andy

Model trains, hot rods, hydro planes, it's been a tag team all my life. 

I had AF growing up in the 60's, then put them in the attic.  Then HO became popular, so had HO for a few years in the 70,s.  Lost interest when at college , then after marriage and a few kids, got interested again, this time in Lionel. since I was always envious of my next door neighbor's Lionel layout as a kid (when I was around 10).  So , bought a bunch of Lionel MPC in the mid 80's, mail ordered from TrainWorld, mostly their 'closeout' items, and have had Lionel and AF since.    I will go a month or several and not look at my basement layout, but then around Fall thru New Year's am running the trains often.

I left the hobby and sold just about everything.  Along with all the HO gauge collection I had stored away, most all of my other railroad items went:  my grip and all its contents from the railroad days, every book and pamphlet published on the CB&Q including Freeman Hubbard's personal copy of Diesels West by David P Morgan, Joe McMillan books, bound volumes of Trains and Model Railroader magazines, and more.

What brought me back was the purchase of Lionel's first iteration of the Polar Express for our Christmas tree......and then "the dam burst".

I quit playing with toy trains probably around age 8 or 9 and didn't start up again till I was 34.  Purchased a new Lionel train for my oldest son on his first Christmas and the bug bit me; not him.  Drug my old stuff down out of the attic and found myself fully immersed in the hobby again.

i should note I never lost my interest in prototype railroading nor railroad history though.

Curt

Pretty much every night.

Ditto what Rusty said about 10 posts above ^.

KD

I'd have to copy Andy's post about seven above. I loved them when I was young and returned as life slowed back down again much later.

juniata guy posted:

I quit playing with toy trains probably around age 8 or 9 and didn't start up again till I was 34.  Purchased a new Lionel train for my oldest son on his first Christmas and the bug bit me; not him.  Drug my old stuff down out of the attic and found myself fully immersed in the hobby again.

i should note I never lost my interest in prototype railroading nor railroad history though.

Curt

This response pretty much sums up my experience as well.  Only I came back into the hobby at 40 years of age.  I couldn't stand the non prototypical look of Lionel's product line for many many years.  Once I saw ROW's brass B&O articulated engine (with fire box flickering glow) at a train show my best friend dragged me to, it started to rekindle the fire in the old firebox.   I really liked reading about the old prototypical steamers as that technology caught my fancy.   

Like Hoppy, Later, I went to a train show with best friend and saw a beautifully restored GG1 with a set of Madison cars in pristine condition, I thought well why not, it will look great on my self.  Well the rest is history as they say because it started a buying spree commonly called "train fever".  Fortunately I got a grip on it before it got way out of hand and simply focused my interests on B&O and C&O.  Otherwise I'd be in the poor house today! 

   I left they hobby once a year for 20 years as Mom insisted the track be put away after the holidays. (Actually had an under the bed layout for about 6 years, but that's no fun here) Normally March meant time to pack it up Made it to June one year in my teens .

I ran my Gramp's trains often enough to fill the gap.

  On my own, I literally unburied my Grandmas forgotten, dirt covered Marx CV set, down an inch or two, in a dirt floor garage, and broke them all out again that summer. "The girl that got away" was encouraging me on for a bit too, she ran them just as often as I did.  But in one "Shleprock" week of bad luck, put them back in boxes while I moved on from the girl, home, lousy "friends", greedy partners, and two separate businesses I had started, groomed, and then shared .

   TMCC intro got them out again for a bit, but lack of answers outside an $80 book kept pursuit of that interest at bay rather permanently. So after Christmas I packed them away myself.  (I like to ask sales reps about my auto's too. No answer? Old and used is fine, not just my loss )

  Injury hit one day, resulting in my 2037 loco being put on a high shelf to look at. Once healed enough, some track for it to sit on. Then power to light it. Then more shelves for a ceiling layout. Then injury again. A second 3 month stint in bed, led to crawling past the train box. Unable to reach my shelves I grabbed a couple pieces of track daily, using a pair of channel locks "fetched" for me, to press them together. The huge floor layout, and couch command, lasted a year. Then the table was slowly built, waiting for help wherever I was limited. The shelf layout has it's two permanent engines now as I've found it too much to deal with the planned scenery, or swapping stock. (DT&I's electrification work train, reaching towards that last connection to the Virginian, "Fords dream")

   Too much time, and "no life", I'm very thankful I never fully lost interest.

I am starting to loose interest in 1 1/2 inch scale stuff, I am the Vice President of my club I belong too and It is because there is no one committed to the club to keep it going and the BOD are the ones doing everything now. I will be taking a different position on the BODs next year and hopefully my interest comes back in a few years.

If  I get bored, I just change scales for a while.

I am restoring a HO Monorail and added DCC to On3  Brass Locos currently.

Rubber gauging is the key to avoiding train boredom.

SDIV Tim posted:

I am starting to loose interest in 1 1/2 inch scale stuff, I am the Vice President of my club I belong too and It is because there is no one committed to the club to keep it going and the BOD are the ones doing everything now. I will be taking a different position on the BODs next year and hopefully my interest comes back in a few years.

BOD?

    You've read enough to know all the usual advice here pretty well Tim, but your in a whole different area there, requiring much more commitment, and cash, than many can guarantee over time. In that position, You need to be a backbone of regularity, to lead by example even without followers, even at a crawl. If you wouldn't run alone, that might not be your scale, even as cool as it is.

  As a note, the locals here doing large rideables have obvious "on" and "off" years. Over time I've noticed, though I'm usually just passing by, one guy and a yellow carbody diesel is their backbone. Some years I didn't see any trains or people. Other years, it's crowds. But that one guy could be caught alone in the rain and still rides till it pours before the cover comes out. Definitely "his thing".

I am starting to loose interest in 1 1/2 inch scale stuff, I am the Vice President of my club I belong too and It is because there is no one committed to the club to keep it going and the BOD are the ones doing everything now. I will be taking a different position on the BODs next year and hopefully my interest comes back in a few years.

I belonged to a local club for a while. Lots of advice from the members on how to do things, especially how to spend any money we had. But when it came time to doing whatever work was required, it was always the same handful of people.

Will you be able to do a good job as a member of the BOD if you are no longer interested? While I am certain your intentions are good, many people would find it difficult.

My first train set was purchased for me by my dad when I was one.  The trains were enjoyed until the high school years came about. Then all through my college years the trains sat in the closet. When I got married (I was 28 at the time)   the hobby was rediscovered and it became train shows every month. The collection began building from that point. During the years we were buying and setting up a home, raising a family and trying to earn a decent living, all the trains sat on shelves in the basement.  Only about 13 years ago did the the time to begin building a layout come about; 4 loops, three levels and in a 14' x 28' room that was also built from scratch. Its 95% complete at this point. In summation the only time that I left the hobby was in high school, during college years and in my mid 20's when my career began. How could one forget all the joy that the trains brought in my early and now bring in my late years?

I never left the hobby as much as it might have simply been put away until after the establishment of a secure professional career that insured family and future, provided the beginnings of "free time", and the rest of the resources.  There might have been ~30 years in that gap.

Like others, my interest has waxed and waned - sometimes due to other life distractions and sometimes due to other interests. Our family had an HO figure-8 on a pingpong table in a spare bedroom whilst I was growing up. But there was a long gap until I discovered MR mag in a local library and purchased a N gauge set. After the great blessing of finding the perfect basement for a layout, complete with living quarters above it, I've enjoyed 16 years of puttering around with different layouts. 

Usually, I am more 'into' the hobby in the cooler months - which prevail here in Illinois.  Do you find weather influences your time with your trains?

Had to abandon Lionel and Marx trains when I was a young teenager, but not by choice.

Immediately after our first son was born, started in HO.

Out of HO and into R/C airplanes for about 10 years.

Into O-Gauge for the past seven-eight years.

Had Lionel and N as a kid (what was made available to me) and tried some HO as a young adult (didn't really have any space), but went off into fishing and cars and then 20+ years of model airplanes. Rediscovered Lionel with a pre-war train found in a trash bin (really) about 4 years ago, been going at it since. Besides my car, this is now my primary hobby, along with LEGO with the wife and grand-kids.

.

I left the hobby in 1955 when I was 10 and my father died at 41. His trains were packed away. Those trains were unpacked in 1995 when my wife and I had sufficiently settled into our new home and the empty basement was left to my creative adventures in having a first layout of my own. And I'm still at it, Pete, though the layout has been through a few changes since then, and right up to Run285's partial record of more recent changes.

FrankM.

I had trains as a small boy, and they fell into disuse and were packed away for many years.  I sold all of them in 1972 shortly after graduating from high school.  I used the money to buy a Gibson EB-3 bass guitar (which I still have).  Fast forward to about 1983 when my wife mentioned that it would be nice to have a train under the Christmas tree like she remembered as a young girl.  Within a couple of weeks, I had purchased a transformer, a bunch of O-27 track, and the C&A Hudson and matching passenger cars.  Over the years since then I've had permanent layouts at our different homes and then had to pack everything away several times.  

Some many stories are familiar. My dad built my platform in 1957 when I was 12 and I built the trains until the usual 16-year-old stuff; cars, girls, guitars in that order. When a young married, we lived in a basement-less townhouse with a one-car garage so there was no place to set up anything. In 1992 I wanted to improve my machinist tools collection and sold all the trains for $550 at The Toy Train Station in Feasterville, PA thinking (erroneously) that I'd never be back in toy trains again. My son and I started to build an n-gauge layout in his senior year of high school. We got as far as a track plan and an L-girder, U-shaped frame. He went to college and this structure was a new home for basement spiders. Fast forward three years. All the kids college stuff was emptied from the basement and I could think about finishing that n-gauge layout, but I could no longer see them. That scale no longer fit my 50 year-old eyes. The day he took his MCATs at Penn, I had time to kill and went to Nicholas Smith Trains in Broomall, PA to see what was going on in HO. And then I saw them! MTH and 3rd Rail O'gauge equipment and I decided then and there to go into O'gauge as a serious hobby. I started designing track plans like crazy on RR Track and began buying some engines and rolling stock. And then the company for whom I worked, Henkel, asked me to take over the training function at their corporate HQ in Düsseldorf, Germany. I took my three engines and cars to Germany with me. I asked and got approval that if I built a layout in our German house, they would pay to have it shipped back to our US house. So my first O'gauge layout since my childhood was actually built in the basement of a house on Marconistrasse in Germany. It was 21 X 13 feet. After moving back home in PA, I enlarged it to 27 X 13, and now in our larger home in Louisville, KY the layout is 39 X 15. I'm retired and it has provided total joy to build, work with the grandkids on it (also in Louisville), and build structures. It has made me young again.

Incidentally, I had a Gibson ES 175D in my college band and our bassist had a similar Gibson. He still has his also, but I had to sell my beauty in 1972. Last year, I bought another ES175D (a 1995 vintage) which has also brought me immense joy.