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You know your a model railroader if...
1. You walk into your favourite hobby shop, and the employees
immediately say, "Hi, (your name), we'll get the boss for you."
2. You've ever plunked down half your paycheck for equipment in your
favourite scale, and then wondered what it would be like to model in a
different scale.
3. You've ever sold a perfectly good freight or passenger car, only
because the new super detailed one you just bought makes the old one look
bland.
4. You really agonize over decisions like, "Should I buy flowers for
my wife or a pair of turnouts for my new staging yard?"
5. You talk about your favourite scale with the zeal and fervor of an
evangelist promoting his religion.
6. You see a piece of plywood, and your first thought is to imagine
what kind of layout could be built on it.
7. You haven't let your son play with "his" trains since last
Christmas.
8. You honestly feel that, if your wife buys a new video tape, that
entitles you to buy a freight car, and a new outfit for her means an engine
for you. Fair is fair.
9. You've ever gotten into a debate over whether Kato is pronounced
"kay-to" or "kah-to."
10. You name the places on your railroad after your wife and children,
mostly out of guilt for spending so much time on the layout instead of with
them.
11. You've ever traced the route of a wire under your layout by pulling
on it.
12. Brass isn't something you polish, it's something you paint and
weather.
13. You spend more on your model trains in a year than most Third-World
nations spend on the real thing.
14. The latest issue of Model Railroader arrives on the same day as your
federal tax refund check, and you open the magazine first.
15. The latest issue of Model Railroader arrives on the same day as your
state tax refund check, and the only reason you open the check first is so
you'll know how much you can afford to spend as you read the ads in the
magazine.
16. You've ever bought a freight car you had no use for, just because it
looked so nice, and then bought more just like it, so it wouldn't look out
of place.
17. You've ever been tempted to send flame e-mail to someone whose only
wrongdoing was outbidding you for that special engine on eBay.
18. Your wife buys you a bag of ground foam and a box of Hydrocal for
your birthday, and you're speechless with joy.
19. You hate watching The Addams Family because of what Gomez does to
those gorgeous, rare tinplate trains.
20. You've ever suggested that your wife's ceramic Christmas village
needs a train running through it.
21. Someone says he's finished his model railroad, and you sadly shake
your head and say he's missed the point of the entire hobby.
22. Your model trains run closer to schedule than CSX's do in real life.
23. You have a manila folder (or a subdirectory on your computer) full of
home-drawn track plans that you know you'll never build, but they're too
good to get rid of.
24. You look forward to the latest announcements from your favourite
engine maker with more enthusiasm than a six-year-old looks forward to
Christmas.
25. You think that three hours forming and mounting wire grab-irons on a
caboose is time well spent.
26. You never miss a chance to try and interest your children in your
hobby, even your teen-age son who's in the "cars" stage.
27. You've ever poured your heart into showing off your layout for
friends, and their only questions are, "How much did all this cost?" and,
"How fast can the engine go?"
28. You sincerely believe that the concept of limited-run engines and
cars was dreamed up by the Devil himself.
29. You're setting up a simple Lionel 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."
30. You hate collectors, because they drive up the prices of the
equipment you're trying to collect. (But you're going to run yours, and
that's different.)
31. Your wife assumes you can fix toasters, radios, and vacuum cleaners
because "you know all about that wiring stuff from working on your trains,
right?"
32. You've ever told yourself, "Never again will I try to mount tiny
coupler springs while working over a shag rug!"
33. You've ever felt smug because you found an inaccuracy in a published
photo of somebody else's gorgeous layout. Not that you'd ever say anything
about it, of course.
34. You've ever refused to buy a model freight car because the stencilled
build date (which you had to squint to read) is a year off from the era
you're modelling.
35. You've visited a hobby shop on a busy day, and wound up answering
detailed questions for the customers.
36. You justify the money you spent at a train show as "just doing my
part to improve the nation's economy."
37. Your wife gives you something expensive but inappropriate, like an
articulated stack car when you model the 50's, and you run it to avoid
hurting her feelings, but the whole time, you're squirming inside.
38. You can recite the plot line from at least five Thomas the Tank
Engine episodes.
39. You grumble through the entire family vacation trip because there
wasn't time to stop at Northlandz.
40. You refuse to buy an inexpensive, beautifully-detailed boxcar
lettered for your favourite railroad, because the real thing had fourteen
ribs and the model has sixteen.
41. You feel compelled to browse in the local mall's hobby shop every
time you go near it, even though you know they charge list price and have
nothing you need.
42. You've ever run two or more identical cars in a train, and hoped no
one else noticed that the road numbers were the same.
43. You've ever tried to justify bringing home a new freight car on the
grounds that it's your wife's favourite colour.
44. You talk about the merits of DCC versus cab control at parties.
45. Hardly a day goes by without you making progress on planning the
layout you're going to build someday.
46. Your family has ever eaten in the den because the kitchen table was
buried in decals, tools, and detail parts for your latest project.
47. You've ever gotten defensive with your railroading friends about
buying a model engine or car from a manufacturer they hold in contempt.
48. You've ever calculated how long your layout is in scale miles, and
padded the number by adding the lengths of the sidings and spurs.
49. It constantly annoys you that the kits for model airplanes, cars, and
boats in the hobby shop aren't made to useful scales, like 1:87 or 1:160.
50. You've ever told anyone, "I can quit buying freight cars any time I
want!"
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