DF,

Great topic!  Like you I have a spouse who understands and supports her "train guy"!  While she is not consumed by the hobby like I am, she enjoys scenery, particularly making trees.  She is very accomodating when we talk about layout space, and listens patiently when I want to talk trains with her.  In short, she's the best!

-blue

Hi, Mrs. Blue here. Instead of discussing what other people's relationships may be lacking, I will try to impart why I am so supportive of my husband's hobby of choice.

First, he is my best friend, therefore I care about what he cares about. I want to hear about the things that bring joy to his life, and be as much a part of that as I can. As he mentioned above, I enjoy the scenic aspects of the hobby, and like to create scenes that look real. I am always amazed by the photographs of the well done layouts that he shows me.

Second, I respect him as a human being, and treat him the way I expect to be treated in return. Finding space for his hobby is not an issue. He has the entire basement at his disposal, and as long as I still have a little storage space, that is fine with me. Even if we had living space downstairs, a well done model railroad is not unattractive, and I wouldn't mind sharing the space if necessary.

Then we have the kids. I think that spending some quality family time with his sons running trains is a great idea. If it means having something else to do as a family, I am all for it and will even participate.

I personally don't see the need for a big war. Even if I didn't like the hobby or have any interest in discussing it, I would not in good conscience make his enjoyment of the hobby as difficult as possible. I don't think I would feel very good about myself in that instance.

So guys, keep modelling, and if there are pictures, I am sure to see all your hard work!

Mrs. Blue

Blue, Mrs. Blue:  thanks for responding.

My wife and I read your comments and said, "Yeah, and Amen".    We agree.  (don't know what else to say!)

 If there are comments or questions on this thread in the future,  Great!  We, all, will try our best to answer as helpfully as possible. 

My wife, Elizabeth, and I have been married for nearly 40 years. 

From the beginning I told her about my passion (or hobby) for things in minature. And the desire to have a nice collection of this and that on hand to quelch my desires. She was in a greement, and has for the most part has been very supportive. I'm glad she was, because I would have missed her if she wasn't. Just kidding....

Like Mrs. Blue, we support each other interests. Some days it's model railroading for me, other days it's Elziabeth's interior decorating.

All in all it's about being best friends, and being a loving team.  

Cheers,

Rodger Cook

I am Patty, the wife of Joe Fugate.

I don't believe I ever had a chance to become negative with Joe's hobby as he started training me at the age of 16 about model railroading. Both of us have interests in art, so helping him with scenery and his various endeavors has just come naturally.

When we moved to Oregon in 1991, my dream was to get a 2 story house so that Joe could finally build his dream layout in the basement. This has all come true, and he has had such great fun running operating sessions with his team of railroaders.

I think about the only thing I winced at was when he started suggesting putting tunnel holes throughout the rest of the rooms in the downstairs and running shelf trains through the whole downstairs. I had visions of Tom and Jerry and mouse holes everywhere and felt compelled to suggest he cool his jets (wink). Fortunately he had pity on me and decided to hold his rampant creativity in check!

-Mrs. Patty Fugate

Patty,

Your comment echoes here. It seems like punching holes in walls to connect the layout between rooms is a concept that many wives have a hard time accepting. A friend, who will remain unnamed, suggested I come help him punch a hole through his basement walls into storage while his wife was away on a solo vacation.

My wife felt the same way about holes in walls. One day, I cut a hole in a sheetrock wall, showed it to her and then patched it up, just to show how easy it was. Now she doesn't seem to mind as much.

Bernard Kempinski

 www.alkemscalemodels.com

 

Personal Layout Blog: http://usmrr.blogspot.com/

 

Patty,

We were hoping you would chime in!

Your story gave us a chuckle.

Since I have the entire basement to work with, having trains share living space is not so much of an issue for us at this time.  We are however, planning to build a new home in the future. The plans naturally inlcude a good sized area for trains in the basement, along with a family room etc.  We have already discussed tunneling from the train room into the family room for a branchline on a shelf.  Mrs. Blue is 100% OK with that.

When I was a kid, we had a family friend who had an O gauge track that ran from his bar around the family room.  When he and his wife entertained he would prepare drinks for his guests, load them on cars and ship them out to their various destinations around the room via rail!

While I'll never use my HO layout to serve shooters, I think it will be a great conversation piece in the room.  With the right amount of detail I think the layout would help make the room, rather than detracting from the rooms appeal.  Just my two cents of course. :o)

Patty,

I was waiting to hear what you would have to say on this topic. It was interesting and you make a valid point. Holes in the walls aren't good idea even though they are easy to make and easy to fix up nicely. But I'll tell you my story which doesn't involve holes in the wall.

Last May and June a told my wife that I wanted to get back into modle railroading. She didn't like the idea because she doesn't think my being retired at the age of 60 is a good idea. I agree with her up to a point but finding a job at my age and in my field is not the easiest thing to do in the NYC market which still hasn't recovered for economic reverses of the late 1980s.

I also had begun working on two modules I had purchased a few years ago that would become part of my N-Scale layout. At that time they wer located in the finshed part of the basement. That area measures 25 feet by 30 feet of space and my intention was to use that to house the complete layout. When I finally told my wife that was I wanted to do she let me know in no uncertain terms that it was unacceptable since I had another room in the basement that had been designated for model railroading from the time we bought the house in 1982. That room is much smaller but still at 12 feet 3 inches by 15 feet is big enough to house a nice size N-Scale layout. So to avoid what could have become a relationship killer, I gave in and moved the two modules into that room and came up with a benchwork plan that would use as much of the area as I could.

That plan involved using the full 12 foot 3 inches of the back wall of the room and 12 feet of the 15 that were available of the left wall. I was only able to use 9 feet 7 inches of the right wall because there is a doorway there that leads into the laundry room. The front wall is made up of closets and another doorway leading ointo the finished part of the basement and the stairs leading upstairs to that main level of the house. I was pretty sure this would workout nicely and result in G shaped layout but thinsg conspired against it.

First of all, the door in the front wall of the room is three feet wide since it meets the foot of the stairs in the finsihed part of the basement and goes to left wall. The implications of that was that I could not use all of the 12 foot legth againts the left wall I had wanted to use. So I tried to see what would happen if I used 11 1/2 feet instead. I laid that out on the floor using blue painters tape to see how that would work.

My 96 year old mother in law who lives with us then came down stairs to check what was going on in the laundry room and she goes through the train room to do that. There is another way in to the laundry room from the finished part of the basement but she won't ever go that way, so to aboid a confrontation that wasn't winable (one has to pick his battles if he is smart) I found I had to get rid of another 6 inches of the lkayout along the left wall.

So I revised the plan to accomodate my mother in law and the doors in the train room. But what I haven't told you is that to make as much use of the space as is possible I will have to have two levels and that is going require a short wall at the front end of the layout to supposrt that second level. and that will reduce the walking space for my mother in law by 3 inches. I am not saying anything to the ladies of the house because I don't think that 3 inches is going to be unappreciated since it will provide some my mother in law can use to steady herself when she walks to the laundry room with out making it necessary for her to lean on the foam edge of the layout.

By the way I still have my eye on the finished part of the basement but don't tell my wife. At least not yet.

 Irv

My wife is very supportive. She encourages me both to find time at home to work on my layout as well as to visit other folks for op sessions or work sessions. I try not to abuse the priveledge. She has hobbies of her own and understands my desire to pursue my own hobby. She is into miniatures (it is to doll houses what scale model trains are to toy trains..) and collects childrens books. I think if your spouse has her own activities it helps her to relate to yours. That I have been able to use some of the tools she has for miniatures is a bonus!

She is just into my hobby enough to enjoy some of the side trips I make to take railroad related photographs and to appreciate the results of my efforts. I think that as long as I make sure her and my children are the #1 priority, she will be ok with my #2 priority.

Its just a wonderful bonus that she likes Ranch style homes as much as I like the large footprint of Ranch style basements!

I have the benefit of marrying relatively late in life. I was able to "pre-screen" for compatibility with an "existing condition" rather then suddenly develop a hobby as a change in my lifestyle after years of marriage. Its not a threat to the status-quo!

Chris

My wife Laura is also quite supportive - while she didn't marry an active model railroader, she did know roughly what was inside those large boxes in the corner (a 2x6 module with trimmings). She just figured our apartment that we lived in at the time was too small for a layout.

What she didn't anticipate was her father deciding, while I was away in the Army, that he was going to start model railroading! Which kicked me back into gear.... and she was surprised to discover that I could fit a 2x8 layout with a couple of "tail" extensions behind the couch...

Happily that meant when we started shopping for a house, she understood why I was looking for space for a layout. She also knew that I considered the spare bedroom (which used to be hers) in her father's house to be too small for me. When we did find a house I laid claim to the unfinished single car garage with the poor condition floor for my layout room. It kept us from wondering who was going to be able to park in there, and from further destroying the floor with the weight of a car. My parents spent the week after we took possesion of the house finishing off the walls - insulation and drywall - of the garage for us. How's that for family involvement?

She now occasionally goes to train shows with me, and will patiently read a book while I go off to catch something with a camera...