The author just HAS to repost this. It's from the Model Train Forum and makes him feel a lot better about his attitude. Thanks a heap to MopacPat!
I’m not exactly sure when I started being a senior citizen, but I believe it was age 55, I believe that’s when AARP starts hounding you to join. The entry age varies between businesses and places, my favorite coffee house called me a senior citizen at age 55 also but others went on up into the 60s sometimes.
But I digress from the concern. I’m 77 now and one of my operations associates is in his early 80s. We’ve talked on occasions about some point in our lives where we quit worrying about a lot of details . For example, we both used to have a coronary if we found a brake wheel had come off of a box car, but now we pretty much just don’t care and we’ll fix it when we get around to it but it’s not a national emergency to get something like that done.
I used to really be into super detailing everything. I added knickknack details to locomotives, I would upgrade a brake system on a car to be congruent with its era, which they aren’t always when you get them. I thought a lot about lighting buildings and putting street light poles around my little settlements, just a pole or two like you see around outside in the country when you drive past them at night. I bought operating switch stands with movable targets, I bought derails to add on sidings where they join a main track. I bought a static grass machine to do static grass all over my layout.
Not all of these ideas coalesced at the same time, but basically I began my present layout when I was around 60, still employed, and with a relatively high level of energy compared to now. I’m not sure when the pressure lowering began but it might’ve been within the last five or seven years. I’m 77 now and I found that I’ve basically stopped all the detail work and I’m happy with the broad stroke impressionist appearance that a 95% scenery complete layout can provide. Almost all of the layout has some kind of ground cover, but it’s not highly detailed, no static grass or super trees or anything like that and I’m pretty satisfied with it. It’s a nice background for the trains when I’m operating. And truthfully, aren’t we railroaders first and diorama builders second?
I know that Model Railroader magazine will never want to publish my layout, but I really don’t care, it gives me plenty of pleasure the way it is.
Hope you enjoyed this read.
If you have an idea for a blog post here, let me know. If I can comment on it, I will or I'll see if someone else can and post it.
