Model Citizens Page #7

they've got beautiful layouts

that no one even knows about.

They don't open up to the

public, it's just for them,

and their own

personal enjoyment.

- I'm a real lone

wolf kinda guy.

I'm not part of a club.

I don't have a group

of friends who I

operate with and

that sort of stuff.

I just enjoy doing it myself.

It forces you to get

out of that comfort zone

and meet some other people

and talk to some other people.

Have some people

do some articles

and that sort of stuff.

And now it's to the point where

the social aspect of the hobby

is really enjoyable to me.

And that's something,

12 years ago,

I would have never thought.

- I've tried to do

this all by myself

and not tell anybody.

So I said, this

time I'm going to,

find some good modelers

and have them advise me.

That's when I discovered

that there were

about five or six that live

very, very close to here.

And they could not

have been nicer.

- Being part of a club,

you have many, many

members with many skills.

If you have a problem,

you can consult with them.

- I went to get

a drink of water,

and I left the bell on.

Nobody could figure out

how to turn the bell off.

So it was driving

everybody crazy,

just sitting there going

ding ding ding ding.

(laughing)

- I mean, you can easily

get lost as a little,

individual island if you're

a modeler all by yourself.

Being in a club,

you have access

to people who have

kind of specialized sometimes,

in a particular skill.

So we have, in our club,

a guy who's very, very

knowledgeable about DCCs,

or a DCC guru.

We have somebody who's

really good at wiring.

So any kind of problem you have,

you can go to,

somebody in the club

will have a good answer for it.

- But generally speaking,

you have groups focused

around railroading.

You have groups

focused around specific

aspects of model railroading.

And you have groups

focused around

the history of the railroads.

- [Voiceover] Some clubs

have permanent layouts.

Others have portable,

or modular, layouts.

- [Voiceover] A

modular layout is

a series of four-foot tables

that are stretched around a room

with curves and everything

that you can imagine

and with some

accessories on the top.

(upbeat music)

- Some groups seek to model

a certain area as a group.

Let's say the southwest,

the midwest.

And so they try to maintain

a kind of consistency

in what they model.

Here, it was working

on Apache Canyon.

I belong to a group called

Southern California.

It's a southern California group

and most of our topography is

the same.

That is it models central

or southern California.

And so there's a

kind of consistency

from one module to another.

That bothers some people,

other people it doesn't.

We wanna give free

rein to people

in modelling what they want.

I mean, we don't

want necessarily

abrupt changes

from urban to rural

right next to each other,

that sort of thing.

We don't want a

farm right next to

oh, let's say a steel mill,

that kind of thing.

So we avoid that sort of thing

and within our own group,

we vet our choices.

We'll say to each other,

"Look, what we really need is,

"a 90 degree curve.

"And we wanna keep

it within this

same geographical location.

And so we talk to each

other and make sure

we're communicating

with each other.

As opposed to merely

building anything we want.

That's within our own group.

I think of our

layout in particular

as kind of a Whitman's

Sampler of layouts,

because we don't have such a

tight tolerance in terms of what

the modules can portray.

So you can go from one four

foot or six foot section

to the next and kind of be in

a different kind of layout.

So if you don't like the layout

that you're on right now,

just wait a few

moments and you might,

things might improve.

- One of the things

that's interesting to me

is to see that, in

model railroading,

people still have a

sense of community

at a time when,

as Robert Putnam pointed

out in Bowling Alone,

people are more

and more of their

personal time is

spent privately,

is spent in small...

Or spent in

pursuit, isolated pursuits.

This is a hobby that tends to

bring people together

in the community.

Many of us, through the hobby,

end up meeting people

who we would not meet

through our work life or

through our social lives.

So, in effect, I end

up having contact

with a much broader

spectrum of people

than I would through my work.

Form some fairly

deep and long-lasting

connections with people.

So because I belong to a

club that meets every week,

there really is a whole

community of people

with shared interests,

that I'm part of.

My sense is that I talk to a lot

of my colleagues and friends,

they don't have communities

like that in their lives,

they don't have those

kinds of connections

to some ongoing

community of interests,

outside of their work.

- [Voiceover] So what is the

future of model railroading?

(quizzical music)

- This is going

to sound callous,

but I'm not sure I care.

It's a hobby.

And it's not something

for everybody.

It's not like a religious cause

that we're trying

to convert people

to become model railroaders.

- There's a lot of

doomsday predictions

that it's going to end.

And with the higher amount

of prices and everything,

I think yeah, it does

look a little grim.

It's hard for someone

like me to tell

a 14-year-old kid, "Hey!

"Why don't you go out

and buy that locomotive."

And the locomotive's 300 bucks.

That's a hard pill to swallow.

I know when I was 14,

you couldn't get me to

buy a $300 locomotive.

I know of a million things

I could've bought then

for 300 bucks, and

it wasn't trains.

- It's kind of

expensive, it can be.

I spend,

I think I spend maybe about

$2,000 a year on trains.

Two to three thousand

a year on trains.

Three on the high side.

- Everybody's been predicting

the end of the hobby

for years now and I just see

more and more stuff coming out,

so somebody's buying it.

- I'm not so sure that

it's as dire as all that.

I do think

there are, we have a couple

of junior members in our club,

for instance, that do have

a huge interest in trains.

And are the standard-bearers

for the next generation.

It may not be as big

as it is right now,

but there are certainly

a lot of interesting

new technical aspects

that make it less

of an old fashioned,

sort of fuddy duddy hobby that

you may think it might be.

- [Voiceover] A tyke

trying his hands

with David's electric trains.

Next year, the

Eisenhowers will spend

Christmas day in

the White House.

- [Voiceover] Technology

has received a lot of blame

for breaking down

society and making people

islands unto themselves.

We probably won't give

up our smartphones

and tablets anytime soon.

- [Voiceover] Down here

are the function controls.

- [Voiceover] But

we can adapt them

to our own created worlds.

- [Voiceover] I can turn the

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