Why are you in the hobby?

1 - I liked toy trains as a kid.  Somehow the continuity with my early life is very comforting.

2 - It provides a variety of diverse project and fun opportunities - I can built scenery, model buildings, fix or even scratch build locos and rolling stock, play with electrics and machinery, try to invent new operating acessories and animation, or just run trains: it's a combination of different modeling hobbies all in one.

3 - It won a contest of for "last hobby standing"

• I got tired of playing with cars.  I'm too old to lay on my back on cold concrete with a wrench in my hand.  Been there/done that regardless of what it is with regard to hot rods and cars.
• I got tired of building model ships - my main hobby for years.  Besides, the house is full of them.
• I did astronomy and telescopes for a while but the internet is so much better for looking at other planets and such . . . and standing outside on a winter night at 2 AM peering through a tiny eyepiece is not my idea of fun anymore.
• I'm no good at golf: my college coach advised me to give it up, he said I was the only student he ever had who was going to hurt himself playing golf.
• My middle son goes fishing often nough that I get what I want in that just going with him: and I like just spending time with him more than catching the fish.

Finally, there is this: I meet more people and make more new and interesting friends in model railroading that in any other hobby I have ever had. 

After Lee's detailed and very well written response, there is only one answer left:

BECAUSE.

Real railroading is too expensive and I don't have the land to support it.

<<<1 - I liked toy trains as a kid.  Somehow the continuity with my early life is very comforting.>>>

Lee's number one response above.

Also:

For me it's an Operational hobby.  My Dad was into stamps and coins.  I like a hobby that can do something, be worked on, tinkered with, play with.

I enjoy sharing it with others.  More take to it than say, matchbook collecting or collectable plate collecting.

Cost is not prohibitive.  You can actually make money to enable the hobby.

I enjoy it immensly; it is very satisfying.

I can take all the negativism and negative rants on this forum and elsewhere.  Most I find humorous and they enable me to focus on what I enjoy and round out my life.

Lionel trains on Lionel track with Lionel control and Lionel accessories and a knowledge and understanding to service it all, get it all working properly, understand its limitations and compatibility.

It's just FUN!

I have been doing it so long (1958 on with a break from school from about 73-79), I don't know why anymore.....It's just part of me.

One of my 1st memories is being on my grandfather's shoulder watching the #6 EL at Middletown Rd in the Bronx. My other set of grandparent's lived along the New Haven in Larchmont.....McGinnis colors flying by is another early memory.

Lying on the floor, watching my 1958 Lionel set (NH F3 freight) at eye level, hooked me forever!

I am awful at golf.....so I no longer play.....it's just no fun being so inept.......the other thing I do is read history books (modern European military history, American Civil War and naval history).....but you can only read so much!

Joining a club and this Forum has made this a social activity, and even more enjoyable

Peter

Good question. I asked myself that same thing as I strolled around the Greenberg show last weekend. What used to be a much enjoyed event has turned into something I had no interest in, and left after an hour. The dealers with their overpriced, shabby wares, the haggling between buyers and sellers, the worn display layouts were all kind of a turn off this time.

I enjoy creating miniatures, and model trains allowed me to create them on a fairly large scale in the form of a layout. The trains offered a chance to learn new skills in the arts of detailing, restoring, and repairing, and their motion and noises added a pleasing kinetic energy to the miniature village I had created.

I'm in it now for the fun and camaraderie.  I got back into it for the nostalgia for a family tradition that I had been missing.  And for me, it can all be traced back to the 1930's when my grandfather bought an inexpensive Lionel O gauge tinplate set to place around his Christmas tree, and fast forward around 40 years when he gave me that same set as a Christmas gift in 1974 in order to continue the tradition of having a train around the tree.

Andy

To make a ton of money selling my trains and retire.  (Did I say that with a straight face?  I've been practicing.)

it's the chicks...

It started as a wee lad with a wind up train from Rexal drug store for Christmas.  Needless to say, that darn spring did not last long so I pushed the train around the tracks instead for the next several years until I got an HO set for Christmas.  That lasted until I got married and started having kids.  My space got more and more limited but I survived by switching to N scale.  As I am getting older, my eyes are doing the Von Trap family song, "so long, farewell, auf vedersan, good bye" so I moved back to HO, then O, dabbling in G and at one time had one third share of a 1 to 1 Plymouth switcher.  As stated previously, cost and real estate really limits what you can do with the 1 to 1 engine but I had no problem seeing it!

I grew up a block from the CNS&M and Soo Line interchange, where there was always "flying switches" as well as watching the last of the CNW steam with my grandfather. I hung out at both the Soo and North Shore stations and pestered the railroaders, motormen with questions in an era when kids were safer on their own.. Like a lot of kids of that same era, I wanted to grow up to be a engineer. The wave from the caboose was always a treat. There was always a train under the Christmas tree. Dreams of far away places were there to, the billboard boxcars, Phoebe Snow, The Mountaineer zooming past.. I consider myself one fortunate guy, and I never lost that sense of "magic"...

It was the lure of that bright headlight in the distance staring down the tracks at me when I was a child.

Trains are BIG!

About 29 years ago...I stood in front of a Judge and was told to "get another hobby or go to jail"...I was forced into this !

Christmas Gardens, Frenches train shop, and the Monkey Wards catalog.  It's a Baltimore thing that started for me around 1950.

History.....Family and Rail.  My Great Grandfather had one job from the age of 14 to retirement......B&O railroad. An uncle that was with C&O all his life, and later in life most of my family in laws worked for PRR/PC.

But my early life was spent in Ashland KY and of you have ever been there a 4-5 track mainline runs through town....and my first memory was a string of hoppers....and I wanted my own. Got a Lionel starter set. changed to HO, N scale in 1969, back to HO with some G, and back to O 3 rail in early 1990's because of less hassles.

I have other hobbies but this is the first....and maybe my fav.

Oh well Chinatrain beat me to the punch..... but seriously.  I love being creative and this is a great outlet other than my artwork.  Plus, there is something very therapeutic about just sitting there watching the trains go around.

I love trains, in particular steam trains. According to old box camera photos I took my first train ride at 6 months old from N.C. to Ohio to see,or be seen, by my Grandpa and Grandma Miller[no relation to the OGR Editor-in-Chief].

I love to see the 1/4 scale run round and round.

 Not so much the trains. They (layout) are a medium which allows the joy of creating,

 in three dimensions, with all its varied processes, my little world.

 Why O guage? My father-in-law's gift of his boyhood Lionel 225 prewar train set.

It's a fun way to be creative, especially in a nice snug basement during a cold winter, by making a layout and then 'working' it. I also enjoy the friendships.

Hobbies are healthy.

It's cheaper than therapy...

Many great responses on this thread.  As for myself, I run only postwar locomotives, with no electronics (though I do enjoy many modern-manufactured cars).

Lionel trains on Lionel track with Lionel control and Lionel accessories and a knowledge and understanding to service it all, get it all working properly, understand its limitations and compatibility.

I agree with all of this, though in a postwar context.  Maintaining a layout that might have been created in the early Fifties, using only Fifties technology, is a challenge that I find very enjoyable.

I liked toy trains as a kid.  Somehow the continuity with my early life is very comforting.

There's some of that in it for me, too.  And in my own case, the continuity extends even further than that, since I've restored my parents' tinplate trains, and I run those, too.  Older Lionel isn't just a model of history, it is history.  It's a lot like restoring and running an antique car -- only less expensive.

I love being creative and this is a great outlet other than my artwork.  Plus, there is something very therapeutic about just sitting there watching the trains go around.

Bingo!  One of the oft-repeated quotes I used to see in scale-model magazines was "It's boring, just watching the trains go around!"  Not for me, it's not.  Knowing that the trains are going around because of my skill and experience is very satisfying.

(I wonder how many others here are also involved in artistic pursuits of one kind or another).

Like many other posters, I've been through HO and N.  And I also dabble in two-rail O scale to this day.  But the system that gives me the most enjoyment for the buck is still 3-rail postwar Lionel.  Just as much fun now as it was when it was new!

I liked the Lionel trains as a child that my dad had, he had two pre WW2 train sets and they still work. Another reason could be that trains were more popular years ago and almost everywhere you went you could see train tracks and trains.

Maybe it also had to do with my grandfather working for the Reading Company, a.k.a. Reading Railroad. I lived north of Reading PA for a few years, mainly during high school.

Lee F.

Why not?

My reason------I like it!!!!! And have for the past 50 years or so.

Having trains as a youngster and growing up next to The Reading and PRR lines it is just natural for one to have it as a hobby. It is relaxing and you can create your own world the way you want it.

     Part of me never grew up.  O gauge reminds me of my first Lionel set I

received Christmas of 1961.  My memories of riding my bike downtown to watch

the real ones go by on the Pennsylvania are still fresh in my mind, as are the

occasional old diesels pulling a few coaches past Grandma's property in back

(Erie) on a Sunday visit when I was a kid.  All my folks are gone now, but

remembering these times is a great comfort.  The trains are a big connection

for me to those years.

     Hoppy

Your question is nothing but pure navel gazing.

Genetics?

Ricky

I like O gauge/scale trains.

Rick

To annoy my wife.

Scott Smith

I wanted an electric train as a kid but the folks could not afford one so I played with the kid around the corner that had one under his bed.

We bought one for the oldest boy (Tyco O guage), and then an HO for the younger a year or so later, neither like the trains, they were packed up and traveled around the US for several years ( I worked construction). We visited my dad in the late 80's and guess what, he had 3 lionel trains.

When I retired a couple of years ago, I bought on impulse a couple of trains (I also have one of Dads and the boys) that I thought were pretty- So the hobby began.  I have a few trains, nothing like you folks have but I enjoy them all running around in a oval. 4 trains all at once.

This is a GREAT forum , I read it every day and it amazes me how LITTLE I know about trains, forget the senery, I have a blue thumb and an almost broken foot from making a new table.

I suffered for years with severe lower back pain. After consulting with several specialists it was determined that it was due to sitting on my wallet. The wallet was too thick and was causing an abnormal tilt to my spine while seated.

After 5 years of buying O Gauge locomotives and rolling stock my wallet is much thinner. My chronic back problems have been solved.

Gilly

I guess I never got over the fact that my parents got rid of all my Lionel trains when I was a teen. I guess I was wanting them back so much, that I just had to go searching for every engine and train car that I ever had and some more just for good measure.

I got my first set a Lionel 520 at age 4 in 1957 and been all thru the steps HO, N etc but always favored O the most. My Dad liked the HO. My only break from trains was When Girls became prettier than a F-3 and Cars more interesting but I always would look in hobby shops when I could. 

Was always into British OO Gauge as a kid - helped along by dad. Had a cousin in Canada who used to send me USA railmags - always liked big American steam and diesels with the big headlight. Grew up, got married, had kids - continued to "dable" in OO. Dad retired and started in OO which I inherited when he died.

One day was idly daydreaming about a mate of mine who when we were about 8 had some huge american trains that I later discovered were Lionel. Whilst recovering from illness did a bit of research and suddenly discovered what you lot have known about for years!!   The rest they say is history Every one who sees my stuff is amazed at size and "heft" of diecast. There is no going back now.

Also met and made friends with some great people - even found a regular poster on here who lives in the next village to me - we now have "English/American Trainclub once a month"

MIKE

At the age of six, I was given an old Lionel train set that belonged to brothers after they had moved away from home, that they, themselves received second-hand. Because no one around knew to work on old trains, I spent many long hour watching my old train run, wishing it would run smoother, and most often, hoping it would run at all. I may collect a little and model a little, but maybe because of my childhood, what I like most is tinkering with forlorn and abused trains in the early postwar genre. My favorite part of this hobby comes after fixing something that was previously left for dead and watching it run again.

Dan.

Same here! Born and raised in a railroad family, and still at it since I was 2 1/2 to 3 years old.

To meet girls.