They are just such a silly thing, especially for those of us over ten but we still love them.
Some like to collect and keep them in a box, others like to build their own from old biscuit tins and plenty of us like to just play around modify and tinker with them.
For me its about heavy old locos fitted with decoders and super super quite motors, or drilling holes for lights and stuff, or just generally tinkering with something.
So go ahead and tell us why you love your trains and what about them brings you such joy.

What's not to love?

Just had a look at your layout video Jean, very nice with the little Faller vehic,es and such.
Plenty of room to escape everyday right there.

I usually spend with them 12 hours but my wife is visiting a friend of hers meaning I am with them 24 hours...

I agree with John, there are lots of problems to solve. Figuring out how to put passengers in 4000 series cars, mending an engine, making a new structure. There are a lot of things to learn which is great fun.

But every day or night I take a few minutes and watch my five trains march around the layout automatically. My wife says it is like watching fish in an aquarium.

For me, they are the reason I am still here above the dirt, according to my therapist. I am autistic, but was not formally diagnosed till I was into adulthood. But struggled with extreme bullying and suicide thru my teen years. But when I got stressed and overwhelmed, I could retreat to my model train world(my safe place) to get thru those tough times and not go thru with ending my life. My model trains and have many of them, are my primary tool to survive living on the spectrum as a adult. While the socializing part of going to train shows and meet ups to run my G scale live steamers is overwhelming for me, I enjoy it way to much to be a hermit and stay at home. After starting with mostly Lionel trains(most common here in the USA), I shifted to LGB and European meter gauge after getting a starter set from my German relatives upon thier return from a trip to the home country. I got into Marklin in my late 20's. I still do both, Marklin HO and a bit of Gauge 1(mostly Maxi items) and my LGB narrow gauge trains. So for me, model trains are the farthest thing from pointless, they are/were literally difference between life and death for many years and now are important to my mental stability. Mike the Aspie

Playing with Märklin since I was 8 years old.
For me it has primarily been fascination with modelism and miniatures. I can stare at models and dioramas endlessly.
Unfortunatly my own abilites of building something beautiful are rather limited, but I try, and can usually get results that are "OK". -at least to me.

But it takes too long.

"It takes too long", because the OTHER thing that I like about building train layouts, is to go BIGGER EVERY TIME!
Bigger and more complicated. More ambitious. Always optimizing and exploring all posibilities in a given space.
I´m now on my 4th layout, and it´s now in a room of 30m2 dedicated exclusively to the train. (You can even say that this particular HOUSE was bought with the layout in mind!)
Now, a densely optimized track-plan in a 30m2 room is quite a big deal, and the whole thing represents a huge amount of work.
Howver, instead of working on teh decoration, most time is currently spend just watching the trains go by.

Hi Mike.

For me too , my trains have always been a psychologically "safe place" albeit for different reasons , as I moved from childhood to adulthood, then the latter with "retirement" added as a qualifier.
Spending life as an engineer solving problems cannot just come to a "dead stop" simply because of going into retirement.
I was told that keeping the brains challenged and stimulating the imagination are the best preventions for old age brains decay.

Cheers

So if a model train layout has 1 or more turnouts it definitely has a point.

It is absolutely a untreatable disease.

When you're young you get all these extreme ideas of doing something and mine was to buy a 40 ha property and make it into s theme park with a model train layout but guess what this dream never eventuated except the model train layout, at the time my business was able to support such extravagance but than things started to change business wise and otherwise but 2 important points stayed with me, my wife and my layout,
over the years it became a white elephant but just to let it go I couldn't do it, so its been on my back since than (approx 36 years) and since my retirement and the extension of the garage has taken most of my free time., I always have been active so it was relaxing thinking I'll never get bored, I don't drink or smoke and this gives me another advantage one knows and is alert what goes on around you but it has taking its toll over the last 2 years with a never ending workload and it looks like we are at least a year away before I could confidently say, I've achieved my goal (which wasn't in my thoughts with sound decoders, high efficiency motors, ball bearings and Led' and the ever changing electronic technology) creating braking modules and opto couplers., with gardening I'll get a lot of satisfaction and it is also relaxing but there is a limit how many weeds you can remove in a day when you're 74 years old and I don't think Peter or Paul in Heaven will commend on the good work I've done because these weeds are back next year at the double rate.
One project we're almost finished and this was reconstructing the layout to a simpler formation with less turnouts (originally there was about 200), my son made the recommendation and this refurbishment alone took about 10 years and is still ongoing (HOe).
although a lot of changes had been made to the layout and there is a lot of room for trains but I don't have a shadow fiddle yard and it would have been impossible having a module layout this would have been viable., in the last 34 years my collection of locos and carriages has increased and this means I need more room which I haven't on the layout, so for instance I want to run Swiss or BLS trains I have to get rid of all the other trains on the layout and this is not a choice I would like to continue of doing because every time you handle a loco there is the risk something will come off or you damage something and this brings me back to my previous post, maintenance and fixing things will be here for ever and most probably at a high rate I didn't anticipate.
As much as you may admire my layout don't go down my path and if you do make sure its bigger than mine

John

Edited by user 13 February 2019 01:57:22(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

What's the point?

To escape the real world. In a place where I have control - until things go wrong hahaha! While the process feeds my addictive personality. All while I attempt to curate a small vision of a world which has disappeared.

And, to confirm that I am not alone !!

Do you understand your kids, why they keep gazing on a small screen at a computer to see where somebody or something only goes piff-paff-puff for hours, only agile fingers needed to press buttons? Never stops, never break down, never needs any challenge to the brain!

A digital MRR is completely different, even meanwhile you have a computer screen as well where you gazing on it, sometimes. But then you need a brain.

do you mean a point of interest ?

I know that feeling... I wish I had more control over the trains I took to work every day.

When it happens a few hundred meters away from where I live, it takes a couple days to fix. When it happens on my layout, it takes me a couple of seconds to fix via the hand of God.

To be fair to our infrastructure, it was 28C that afternoon...

I've been telling people for years: don't take a short cut

John

My test oval is pointless, as it turns out...

Multum in parvo

The Romans didn't have model trains but they had a perfect phrase for the delight they bring
Jabez

Ah, the dangers of using 360mm curves on a 1:1 train set.....

Other than my trains I like coming on to this site and listening to Goofy. That is certainly not pointless .. I think.

David, does the Scots offer Scotch in pints?

Sounds as some people outside of Scotland are drinking Scotch per pints! - pointless

To your health!

Beer is served in pints. Whiskey in small (ish) glasses. Some pour their whiskey into their pint of beer.
I don't drink and drive ...other than when driving Marklin trains.

We always have a drink before going out to catch a haggis.

Ohhhh yes, it's always Pinteresting whenever beer is involved........

It started more than 50 years ago:



Per.

When I was a wee nipper (well, pre-teen anyway), my oldest brother used to taunt me that Milk and Elephants come in Pints. I never got it much to the amusement of our Dad and other brother.

It was some years before the penny dropped

I believe they are driven into a gorse thicket, and then when cornered, beaten to death with an iron flail. This method of dispatch tenderizes them for future consumption.