What other Hobbies did you get in and Dump?

RC Helicopters - total insanity.... As somebody once put it, like trying to balance a 5 pound ball bearing on an upside dinner plate while flying an upside down lawn mower.

Model cars. Got pretty good at it. Won a couple of contests.

 

Did slot cars for a while, but the tracks were dropping like flies in the 1970's.

 

Building computers for a while, but it was getting to be a pain and too expensive.

 

Then there was my brief flirtation with conquering the world and subjugating humanity. I mean if SPECTRE could do it...

 

Got back into trains to stay back in 1988.

Matt, that "conquering the world" thing. I think I read about that in National Enquirer. But they said you did conquer the world. Is there something you want to tell us? Don

Hot rods and cars.

Got my first train when I was 8. Worked with it until I was 15...then turned to cars was a master mechanic by 18. When I turned 21 went to work with the Pettys in NASCAR. Went as high as I could go in that profession. But when your hobby becomes your profession, it is no longer your hobby.

 

Owned a garage until 1980. Then turned to sales.....much later, 2002 I had my first heart attack. Several attacks later our kids bought our business. Doctor said no more cars, so guess what ?  I am now back into trains and loving every minute.

 

Don,

It seems that you and I are the same age. My grandpa introduced me to Std Gauge at birth it seems. I remember being around him, his trains and his layout nonstop in my very young years. I can honestly say that I've never lost interest in trains. In my teen years it was rock-n-roll, hot rods & custom cars and girls. Oh Yes! I earned my "FAROS" plaque at sixteen. Joined the military, spending many years in the Philippines. I even managed to find Lionel prewar there. Anyway, here I am at a ripe old age enjoying my grandpa's Lionel Std Gauge. I even expanded into prewar O-Gauge about twenty some years ago. I'm one of those who has been lost in trains almost my entire life.

**Don, I beat you by one year, 1943 (anyway we're both war babies)**

RC copters for me, too. Challenging, frustrating, and gratifying all at once, and now we can add expensive to the list. The thrill of taking off, flying around (nothing fancy) and landing in one piece. Even crashing and successful rebuilding is fun. BTW no problem with parts availability. Hobby #2 is a keeper.  Rich

Happy Pappy, I was born in 44. You never were lost in trains, you thrived in them. Vincel, nice studio. I had a friend on the mainland that had a nice little studio. Hated digital. The TV station I worked for was switching over to HD digital and pulling out everything from JBL monitors to 4,8 and 16 track reel to reel machines plus the board. Will filled three pickup trucks full of gear. All free. I think he still loves me. Don

I have kept my TOO many hobbies but I did give up playing on soft ball teams.I love baseball but watching it is way to boring.The reason I gave up is because the games were on a weeknight.You get there 1/2 hour before your scheduled game(was usually around 8 30) and the team on the diamond is only in the second inning.You get out of there around 12 30 1 am and these guys want to go to the bar.It just got way to "stupid" for me.Also there sure are allot of drummers into trains.Been playing forever.Nick

Never dumped them but still dabble, playing guitar, rc cars and aircraft and of course coaching softball which is a hobby to me. Was insanely into racing rc cars, would travel to various tracks to race,  including the Velodrome in Encino, Ca. 

 

 

For 25 years - while I raised and put three boys through college, I scratch-built model Napoleonic war fighting ships: specifically I built a model of every class of warship in the British Navy as of January 1, 1805 (the year of Trafalgar).   All were in a uniform scale of 1:87 (HO gauge).  On all I used Preisser figures painted as sailors and officers and put several hundred figures on larger ships.  It was a good hobby, and cheap, too, but toy trains move and do something and I prefer them now.  I treasure these ships, however, and keep all of them in my study now.  

 

Here is the largest, 41 inches at its longest, the 110 gun flagship of the fleet in 1805, Ville de Paris (named, in typical fashion of the time, after the flagship of the French fleet decimated at the Battle of Martinique years earlier).

 

 

Every ship had some special "thing" I did to make the model a bit more of a challenge to build. On this ship, teh decorated rear end removes, and the rear cabins and interior are drawers (about ten inches deep, that each level pulls out, demonstrating a fact that fascinates me to this day: although we look at this ship as a warship (and it was in some way) it was on a day to day basis a floating office building, with clerks and filing cabinets galore - the adminstrative headquarters of a fleet with 40,000 personnel.

 

My favorite ship was actually one of the smaller ones, the 50-gun Chatham, which I made hollow so you could see inside it, and I made it a model of the ship of a specific day: Nov 30, 1776.  This was the falgship of the British fleet that invaded and took Rhode Island during the early part of the US Revolutionary war, and the tiny figures on board are marines embarking in boats that will take them ashore, etc. 

Hobbies! So many over the years, wife hoping this is my last endeavor. Everything from restoring early Vettes, cruising the islands in our 48' Carver, flying war planes, collecting WW2/Korean war aviation items. Was into "N" gauge, till I stopped in here one day, been hooked since.

My other hobby is brewing beer and I dump it down my throat sometimes while playing with trains. Trains are better, they don't depreciate as much as beer, haha.

When I was a kid I saved everything. I guess you would have called me a packrat. I had 1000's of baseball cards. The entire team s of the Red Sox for 1955-1960. 100's of comic books. 100's of TV Guides from the 1950's. I got married in 1965 & moved to Ct. I came home to Mass. to visit & found out that my mother had thrown all of it out. I'm into trivia & that's what bothers me most. I would love to be able to look at the Guides for example & see what was on then.

I guess her throwing all of that out must have scared me because I save nothing. I throw all the train boxes out, buildings, etc. & have over the last 50 years.

Even though she did this I still have to thank her because she got me into trains around 1957 by giving me my 1st. set (A Lionel Scout) & for that & many other reasons I have great memories of her & loved her dearly.

My aunt bought me a model airplane kit when I was maybe six years old.  I do not

know what happened to it but I was too young to build it.  Then I saw and was allowed

to play with a cousin's prewar Lionel train.  I begged for and received a Christmas set, Marx, which interest is alive and well to this day.  As many kids in the 1950's. I built

models of ships, WWII planes, and in considerable number, model antique cars,

Highway Pioneers and the larger Hudson Miniatures. I then got into HO and packed

away the Marx.  Then, driver's license, and interest in superstock cars, not sated

until later, because school was in the way.  I then saw a rare car at a meet at a

state park and became infatuated with the marque. I found a few of them, wrote an

article on them, published in a national magazine, and tried to get them recognized by the Classic Car Club of America.  Now, 40 years later, a friend of mine who just won

national recognition for his beautifully restored roadster, has FINALLY gotten full Classic status for the later, larger models of the marque.  Along the way I was interested in K-mount 35mm cameras, over a dozen. some very obscure brands, that used the same Pentax family of lenses.  (like Lionel couplers, it just made sense to me that all cameras should be able to interchange lenses) Now, with digital, they are all worthless, so  I no longer pursue those, but do use them.  (Pentax digitals will still

use those lenses)

Not too many hobbies but several interests.

 

Started out building glue together plastic model kits (a few were actually metal).

 

Fascinated with motorcyces.  Had a 50cc moped, then a 750cc Norton Commando Interstate, 850cc Moto Guzzi Eldorado and my last one was a 1000cc BMW K100RT.

 

Dabbled in helicopters, but unlike others above these were the 1:1 models: TH-55, UH-1H, AH-1 and finally the UH-60.

 

Throughout it all I had Lionel trains, a constant.

Been into trains most of my life. Used to like building plastic model car kits as a teen. Got pretty good at it. Even used some of my model railroading weather tricks on a few to make them look like junkers. They're all gone now.

For a brief time while I was a teen I got into gas powered control line airplanes, but never really got the hang of it. Then I went through a brief phase of building small boats powered with the engines from those planes. Built a prop driven little car once than ran pretty fast, but I had no control over it. Worked best in the winter when I could set it down in a tire track in the snow, the tire track guiding the car along. My boys were into RC cars for awhile, naturally I had to get in on the fun too.

Got into shooting about 13 years ago and still doing it. Both "real" and air guns. I enjoy stuff like shooting clays with a shotgun and popping cans with a pellet rifle.

I'm finding that my taste in trains and guns tends to run to the older, traditional stuff.

Footnote to Lee Willis' post:

While visiting the U S  Navel Academy I went into their history museum and found a VERY large collection of 1//4" scale model ships. 

Our tour guide told us that the ship builders  did not use blue prints as such.  Rather they constantly referred to the model and upscaled it's features throughout.

Try to get in to see the collection while it is intact.  A hundred or so all 1/4' to the foot!

When Obama finally closes down the navy we may be able pick the models up at a flee market.

Hobbies: trains, helicpoters,  trains, NHRA race cars, trains, APBA sprint boats, trains, offshore racing, trains, model RR benchwork, trains.......tt

During my time in Chicago, I was heavily into the music scene with that town being the home of electric blues and became an audiophile with a record collection that was enormous. My best friend was a professional photographer for a promoter and so, a regular weekend pastime was hanging out with a backstage pass..then disco arrived along with children. I gave all the equipment and collection away.

Then I became fascinated with both writing and the paranormal and managed to have published various magazine articles and was included in various anthologies on the subject and then I became bored and discouraged with how much b.s was involved with it.

In the midst of all this I was traveling all over as a rehabilitation construction project manager and became pretty involved with historic preservation as a hobby, and then on retirement that interest sort of faded away.

Trains and model trains vanished while raising a family after being a major hobby for me up until my teens, which is pretty typical...only to reappear with my wife giving me an O gauge K-Line set for Christmas..which then exploded into buying "everything"until I got a handle on focusing where I went with it. 

All the other past times came and went but the romance with the rails remained. Why?

I don't have a clue, it must be in my DNA.

I was a Blacksmith interpreter circa 1809 at a Historic House Museum. I stopped when I had a family and moved further from the site. I did fly a tiny model helicopter and never really got the hang of it. I still have it but it has been a while.
Some of my hobbies like kite flying come and go with the weather.

I got into Fresh and Saltwater Aquariums for some time but it was "not for me"... never had much success there. I have toyed with the idea of dusting off my old equipment for another go at it. 

 

Oddly enough, I have about 2K gallons of koi/goldfish ponds (3 in total) spread out on my property that have been very successful and bring happiness to the neighborhood, myself, and the neighbor's cat.

When time from regular work was available I spent my free time restoring several old cars, tractors,etc. Eventually arthritic hands and a diminishing bank account put an end to that hobby.

 

HO trains had been a sometime hobby but at the beginning of the 1980s and frustration with the rivet counting culture of HO, I gave the equipment to one of my sons. Then I fired up my 2333 Lionel Southern AA diesel shelf queens and went with transition era O-gauge for the last 34 years. 

 

However, since 2008 due to age and health issues, and a relocation, I have dismantled two large layouts. Currently I am in process of selling all my trains except for a half dozen of my engines for use with short consists on a small attic layout.

 

I have enjoyed all my hobbies but none as much as O-gauge trains and Southern Railway history. 

[old photos illustrate some suvivors of a really expensive hobby, '69 Caddy, '55 T Bird and our old '49 Dodge farm truck].

 

 

Photography, stamp collecting, model airplanes, and genealogy. 

 

Art

Gave up:  Chasing wild women and raising heck.  Accidentally met a nice girl, fell in love, got married, gave 'em up.

 

Still do:  The trains, obviously; build, fly, crash, repair model planes; make music; fitness cycling; photography; reading (no "literature" anymore, mostly mystery/detective novels).

 

Pete

When I was still working I used to say that the job got in the way of my hobbies.  I have to say that I have pursued and continue to pursue multiple hobbies chief of which is toy trains.  Other hobbies include swimming, cycling, hunting, fishing, hiking, writing  and American Civil War history.  So far I have not dumped any of them and I am going to try to hang on to all of them as long as I can.

I was restoring old cars, would flip a car every 2 to three years. It just got to expensive, insurance, parts, labor and time.

At the time I was engineering cars, and to come home and work on them just gave me a headache.

Next was boating, that did not go far. Anyone want to buy a boat?

Should have kept the last muscle car I restored.

Was going to do some R/C monster trucks or WW2 tanks... never started.

Golf. The Mrs. has been playing since she was 7, still make her play from the Men's tees... I keep that one going

Fishing. Well lets just say every time pick up a fishing rod it cost me my wallet, so killed that one.

 

Seems I have had quite a few in my almost 64 years. I collected baseball cards (still have most and that includes a lot of Mantles and Aarons), pennies, stamps (only with fish or butterflies on them), and fossils (especially of the Ordovician Era). I have maintained aquaria and terrariums (still do, have a small collection of poison dart frogs and turtles...I am an Ohio Certified Volunteer Naturalist and have state permits), bird watch, kayak, and of course, baseball. Heck, at 63 and thinking I had retired for good, I agreed to be the head varsity baseball coach this season. My trains have had to take a back seat this spring.

 

Rick

1)  Started in HO and ditched that for O gauge  

     (O gauge or NO gauge)

2)  Plastic model kits, kits started to become to expensive.

     my 1rst 1/24 scale model cars were bought at the local

     drug store for $5. they now run from $15-$25 each.

3)  HO scale slot cars. My grandmother warned us that if we didn't

     pick up our toys she was throwing them away. Came home from

     school one day and she had picked up our slot cars and thrown them

     away.............thanks a lot grandma1

Old hobbies never die, they just fade away...

 

Rusty

started in trains, went to coin collecting, still was in to trains, then computers hit. put everting else aside and spent over 10 years in computers spent so much time collecting older computers making them run if they did not.  when i was in my early 20's hurt my back. could not do computers like i use to could not lift them or carry them.  so in one swoop i called some one i know and asked him if he wanted all of it.  i kept a few laptops but that was it.  gave him about 4 truck loads of computer equipment.  after that i said god give me a sign of what hobby i should be in.  no sooner then i said that then my grandmother said why not look online for trains.  and i said if i find a rock island northern for a good deal i will go back to trains as a hobby.  i found one that after repairs and shipping cost me under $140.  since then i have been hooked on trains once more.

I've been into O gauge for as long as I can remember, it first started with pulling out my uncle's old # 1107 Texas Special freight set out of my grandmother's attic once in a while when I would stay with her during the summer months.  The set still exists and I kept it at my house for a decade after she passed away, but my uncle wanted it back a couple of years ago, which I was more than happy to do (it was his, after all).  Eventually my grandmother she bought me my own set (the first Black River freight set MPC came out with).  That set is long gone after I went into more scale sized stuff back in the early/mid- 80s (Weaver, Lionel Std. O, etc.).  Even had a tabletop layout set up in an empty bedroom before I left home.

 

Like a couple of others stated here, I also got into scuba & sky diving (still do scuba whenever I can), and I also used to build computers & set my own LANs up, even using the fully robust but now quaint Novell Netware servers (I'm also in the IT field).  I also enjoyed travelling, visiting state parks, going up & down the CA coast line, explore old ghost towns, etc.

 

But even when other interests took up my time, I never fully got out of trains; I'd still set up a temporary loop on the floor whenever the mood struck me.  I now have an 8 X 16 layout downstairs.  I run primarily scale 3 rail trains, but I still have a somewhat sizeable collection of MPC (mostly from the Famous Name RR series) and some of the billboard quad hoppers and I also have some postwar and I'm still having fun.

I  scratch build models of ships and planes, Building structures. I also like competition  shooting. All of the other fun stuff is on hold as we build out the basement, sheet rock, wiring, framing, drop ceiling, and build the biggest crapy basement layout in VA.

I have a waterfront seen in mind and it will have some ship in it. Airplanes overhead and some modified or scratch built structures here and there.

Hot rods, built a 32 model B roadster with 65 Mustang running gear (a mishap left only the running gear).  Next, built a 31 model A roadster, complete with 348 Chevy with two fours.  Restored a 66 Mustang in the early 90's, then ended cars.  Collecting 50's art glass and Murano Glass clowns.  After spending lots and lots of money, the bottom fell out of the collecting market, now I'm stuck with vast collections and nowhere to sell them.  Oh yeah, that reminds me, I got into stocks when the market was at a peak, and then it took the BIG dive, and now my stocks are worth less than 50% of my investment.  

 

THIS IS A HEADS-UP.  IF YOU SEE ME SELLING SOMETHING ON THE FORUM, BUY IT, BECAUSE IT'S FOR SALE AT WAY LESS THAN I PAID.  I SELL EVERYTHING AT A LOSS, BUT MAKE UP FOR IT IN THE VOLUME.

speaking of hobbies: anybody ever chck out this site for plastic model kits.

there are also some train kits in brass.

 

http://www.oldmodelkits.com/index.php

1) Mostly O gauge since I received my first Scout set in 1958...I still have it; although a bit ragged after many years of use.

2) Dabbled in HO for a time; found it entirely too small to work on - dumped it 25 years ago

3) Motorcycle restoration and Motorcycle riding - still going strong

4) Flying - both my wife and are are pilots, and have a plane out at the local GA field

5) Model building (mostly aircraft), sample of a second prize win at Nanton Bomber Command show in 2013 (link to F-104 at 6:58 mark)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=zLQ44zW-wXQ#t=421

 

r0d

 

It seems my hobbies have always evolved. I am a collector my whole life and just change what I collect it seems. I started with baseball cards, Stamps, Coins, Beer cans,Slot cars and then into trains as I got older.. I have always loved cars and enjoy drag racing and have 3 cars I enjoy. I used to quit hobbies before and then later wanted them back.lol What I have learned is I just put it aside for a little and I seem to come back. Better than selling it all and starting over.. But it seems the chase and learning something new motivates me.. I tell people its a Ism... Like alcoholism, I cant help myself..But its fun and I have met some great people on the way.. I now only have the cars and enjoy trains and slot cars still. But the quest to have one of everything seems to be fading..

Cars:

2011 Ford Raptor 412HP

2013 Taurus SHO 365HP

2013 Shelby GT500 662HP

2014 Focus Electric

1970 VW Beetle 53HP

One of the things I've noticed, that some Hobbies, when it comes times to sell out, aren't that easy to find buyers, yet dealers are all over you to sell at a nickel on a dollar value. Finding this out on autographs, pocketwatches, wall clocks, some military items, and some firearms. When I was in the Mid-West, there were all kind of shows to buy, sell or trade. Not so true here in Florida.(same for buying train stuff. Here in Florida its mostly mail order or driving several hours to a Hobby Shop), But have all kinds of Dealers willing to buy it off me.

I am mainly into O gauge trains.

Got involved some with high performance cars for a couple of years but gave it up before getting married.

I have some old Aurora H.O. slot cars from 1965 to about 1977, and a couple of newer cars too. Only raced the cars with my friends; either at their house or my house. I had a nice four lane track layout about 4 feet by seven feet before going into the US Army for six years.

My next layout will have a place for my H.O. race cars. Have a couple of H.O. trains but don't like them as well as the O gauge trains.

 

Lee Fritz

Drag racing. My last was a 1969 Camaro Super Gas (9.90) car. As far as money is concerned, model trains is chump change compared to drag cars.

 

One of my co-workers who still races totally destroyed a $25K engine on it's second pass. You can take a $50K car and reduce it to scrap in less than a minute (including the burnout). The best part is you might "win" your entry fee back and maybe a nice plastic trophy. Time was I'd win marching through the rounds turning 9.91 or 9.92. Today I'd be on the trailer after the first round if I was lucky enough to qualify.

 

I've been "in" and "out" of Golf through the years. Currently I'm "in".