The Warning Signs: You might be a Model Railroader if…
-You walk into your favorite hobby shop, and the employees immediately say, “Hi, [your name], we’ll get the boss for you.”
-You really agonize over decisions like, “Should I buy flowers for my wife or turnouts for my new staging yard ? or Do I need to buy flowers to get these turnouts in the house?”
-You see a piece of plywood, and your first thought is to imagine what kind of layout could be built on it.
-You haven’t let your son play with “his” trains since last Christmas.
-You name the places on your railroad after your wife and children.
-You lobby to reorganize your club as a not-for-profit mu-seum in a vain attempt to write off some of your hobby ex-penses as a charitable deduction with a possible tax refund.
-Someone says she/he’s finished their model railroad, and you sadly shake your head and say they’ve missed the point of the entire hobby.
-You’re setting up a simple train set to run around the Christmas tree, and you’re mentally planning the scenery and structures you’ll need “to make it look right.”
-You justify the money you spent at a train show as “just doing my part to improve the nation’s economy.”
-Your spouse gives you something expensive but inappropri-ate, like an articulated stack car when you model the 1950’s, and you run it to avoid hurting her feelings, but the whole time, you’re squirming inside.
-You’ve ever run two or more boxcars in a train, and hoped no one else noticed that they have identical road numbers.
-You’ve ever tried to justify bringing home a new freight car on the grounds that its your wife’s favorite color or matches your shoes.
-You talk about the merits of DCC versus cab control at par-ties.
-Hardly a day goes by without you making progress on plan-ning the layout you’re going to build someday.
