For model railroaders, there is very much a negative stigma associated with the hobby. Those outside the hobby often view model railroaders as a bunch of creepy men obsessed with a child’s toy. I’ll refrain from spewing the nerdy line about it being a sophisticated, life-like modeling hobby and instead focus on why I choose to be a model railroader in the hope of changing that view point.

My love of trains started long before I made a conscious decision to. My dad instilled a love of them very early on though Thomas the Tank Engine and trips in a stroller to watch them run through town. He would take my brother and I down to the now decrepit platform that stood in the Middlebury rail yard in the afternoons to watch the long rusty grain hopper trains get pulled into the local feed company. Every once and awhile we would make it down in time to see the local commuter train pull in with its string of shiny red and silver passenger cars. No matter if it was a freight train or a passenger train, it was always exciting to see the bright red Vermont Railway engines come rumbling past. The sometimes deafening sound of the horn was even better, especially when it was directed at me when I waived to the engineer. The one thing that could not be topped though were the train rides from Middlebury to Burlington. It always ended up that one parent would ride with my brother and I while the other chased the train to all the crossings so that we could waive to them. There was nothing that made me more excited growing up and are some of the clearest happy memories I have.

As I grew older, the trips to go see trains lessened and the Thomas trains grew up to Lionel sets and eventually to HO scale trains. As my trains grew up, so did the way I treated the hobby. My trains turned from toys that I could play with into a creative outlet that has many different facets. It turned into a little bit of railroad photography, a little bit of rail history and the occasional stop to watch the local freight roll through. As I began to explore the modeling world, I began to see all the different ways that other modelers were able to create very realistic looking trains and scenery. I began to notice too that the common theme between a lot of the layouts that I saw was modelers modeled areas that they either grew up with or saw every day. They were able to recreate snippets of their lives and bring it to life for everyone else to see. This was absolutely fascinating to me and shaped the direction that I wanted to go in the hobby. I immediately decided that I wanted to model the trains that I had seen growing up and bring that world to life. I was no longer buying trains simply because they looked cool, I was buying them because they meant something. I could have chosen to model the massive Union Pacific or Norfolk Southern lines and their miles long trains of coal cars or shipping containers, but I didn’t. I chose instead to model a small, rusty fleet of red and green engines that snake through the hills and valleys of Vermont because I know it and fell in love with it. I wanted to bring to life the character of the fleet of engines that all have their own name and personalities and make it my own. They aren’t just toys or models to me; they are an extension of my memories growing up.