Any railfans here?

Post Reply New Topic

I'm new to this forum, and was wondering if there's any other railfans here?

Ben

Welcome to WP!

Tim

Hi, welcome to WP!

I'm not a railfan myself, but some family members of mine are. Both my father and my brother are real railway buffs. They have built a large landscape model of several square feet. Part of it is urban landscape, with a small town, some factories and of course a large railway station; the other part is rural, with a mountain (not one of those ugly ready-made plastic mountains but a home-made one) and a small village which has another railway station. Most of the equipment is Märklin and Fleischmann (H0-scale). A lot of the model buildings are Piko and Artitec. The "era" is 3 which I believe is around the 1950's, with both steam trains and diesel and electric ones.

I'm a moderately active railfan, still mourning the loss of the Wisconsin Central. OTOH, CN is running a lot of stuff here in NE Wisconsin, so it's not all bad. If I have some time and the opportunity presents itself, I'll stop and watch some of the activity at the usual local trainwatching places.

Mike

Nice to meet you, Ben.

Welcome!

I've been curious about railfanning. My two year old takes an intense interest in trains and I wonder if it will turn into something enduring or if it is just a passing childhood obsession. I spotted a railfan once down at the station and was fascinated by how he kept track of all he'd seen.

I hope you like WP.

That's pretty cool. I enjoy model trains, but not as much as riding the real thing.

You're lucky to have such a great rail system in the Netherlands. It's not as fast as the German and French railways, but tickets are much cheaper, and giving the small country size, speed isn't too much of an issue. In the USA, our trains are slower (except for small corridor between Boston-New York-Washington, DC), the distances much greater, and the tickets more expensive. We do have some incredible scenery though, and the trains are comfortable, so it's still worth riding the train here, especially compared to flying.

I've been to Europe three times, to visit an NT railfan who lives in Amsterdam, and also to explore other parts of Europe on my own.

We don't have Marklin trains in the hobby stores where I live, but when I was changing trains in Frankfurt, and I saw this big HO scale Marklin layout under a giant plexiglass box. The entire setup was coin operated, and kids and adults could control one of the trains in the layout. I'm going to try to insert a photo of the layout.

I didn't get to the the WC before the CN takeover. I would have loved to have seen a bunch of their SD45's in their prime.

It's possible it could turn into a hobby, but it's hard to say, as many two year olds are interested in trains, and just about anything else that's big and moves. My nephew was really into trains until he was about 6yo, and then lost interest. As a general rule, if a kid is still interested in trains by the age of 10, then they are likely to be a railfan for life.

It's a good hobby to have, since it gets you out of the house and around other people, something that's a challenge for many of the aspies I've met.

Well, I'd hardly call it small considering most countries in europe don't even span half the distance between Boston and DC.

The tracks in the north east corridor aren't straight enough to allow trains to travel much faster than 150mph trains (the acela is fast enough (150mph) to be considered a high speed train but japan has 300mph trains).

Welcome!

I love trains, but I'm not a hobbyist.

I've never been on a train in the USA. I've visited Grand Central Station in New York once. I found it impressive; it's even way larger than Amsterdam or Utrecht Central Station, which are both very large train stations for a small country like Holland.
The Dutch trains are fairly comfortable, and yes they're cheap. Public transportation is highly subsidized by the government in order to encourage people to leave the car at home more often.


If you enjoyed that layout, you would probably love the LOXX layout in Berlin. It's huge! Click here for the English version of their website. Be sure to check their photo gallery if you're interested. Here is just a small impression:

As you can tell, although I'm not "really" a train buff like some of my family members, I'm still heavily influenced by them because I'm more than averagely interested in trains.

The Sunset Limited, I have been making a study of every station.

Wow, the LOXX layout is incredible. S-Bahn, Regional Trains, ICE, and IC/EC trains all in one place. Very nice!

I'm hoping to do the Wolstyn Experience someday (steam train camp), and that would mean flying to Berlin and taking a train from there to Poznan, PL. I'll be sure to add an extra day for Berlin if I go.