Hobbies Thread #1
 

What is one of your Hobbies?

Now I have many, but one that I enjoy is Model Rail Road. I have collected over the years old style antiques RR Engines and Coal Cars with tracks for display. I tend to like 1800s and 1900s era style engines that look like steam engines. I do not have room currently to set up a model RR display, but I plan to add a 2nd floor above my garage as a Model Train layout. I will build out a much larger layout that I grew up with in my parents cellar. I have in my head and drawn out on paper the layout I want to build out, and it will be something that will be something I will do over the next 20+ years. The remodel of the garage is a project to start spring 2018.

Mom has her dream living in a historically restored 1839 Victorian home. Dad now gets his Man Cave!!!

What are your beloved hobbies, tell us?

I have vague memories of my dad buying my brother and I a train set right before our parents divorced... It was our birthday present (we're both born in August, two years apart), but I don't remember him ever letting us play with it. :lol:

My own father bought my brother a Super O Lionel War Train set where the track and train cam as part of the set, and then my father bought buildings for "Plasticville" and other train set add-ons. We had a space launcher with movable scaffolding that was motorized and etc. Now my older brother played with the train set, and so did I when I was about 10 years old. By the time I started playing with it, nothing new was being bought for the train set and I lost interest in it, moving onto building military models.

With me there was a island along the river that when the river was low water there was a land bridge to that island but a long section that had a inlet with water on it. My friends and I use to buy and build battleship models and each had a couple each and launch them into the water (basically a pond) and then sit on either side with our BB guns and shoot all the models to sink them. After about 8 years, there were a lot of wrecks on the bottom like a rather cool graveyard. I came back a few years later, and walked to that remote site, I was amazed to still see some wrecks still there in the mud after all those years.

OK, so guys were allowed to play with them, then? I guess that would explain why you started liking them. :lol:

My hobbies, such as they are, are far more connected to the things I was allowed to do as a kid: read, knit, cook, watch movies and TV...

The things I wasn't allowed to touch didn't have that positive association, you know?

When grew up all male kids played with War Toys. Now my father built us a large sandbox in the backyard 8' x 8' with a wooden bench all around it. Kept the sand in the sandbox and gave us a place to sit. We played with all sorts of army men and tanks, cannons, and etc. We would build fortifications and trenches to have our sides fight it out. You got to understand all our fathers fought in WWII, Korea, and some in Vietnam. Next we all ran around our yards dressed in real combat gear and had real looking weapons to play war with.

When we turned teenagers, many of us built trenches, fortifications and forts on either side of the Mohawk river and played war games with BB guns and water balloons. We would play capture the flag and had two teams start out on either side of the river and then fight it out all day long to capture the other sides flag and get it back to our sides base. No surprise we were all kids of current or past military parents, and many of us went into the Military as combat troops in my case a US Army Airborne Ranger.

Another hobby that I have is military miniatures, and I build battlefield dioramas. I like WWII (GIs vs Germans), Civil War (North vs South), Imperial Roman Legion. I enjoy researching and then building them .

Here is a link to the type of things I have done just so you understand what I am talking about. https://www.bing.com/images/search?q...tures+dioramas

So yes as a kid I "played Soldier", I then became a "Soldier", and now I remember with honor those battlefields of past "Soldiers".

My hobbies are reading, drawing, photography (both taking photos and creatively editing them), traveling to Europe. I used to collect things pertaining to all my "special interests" but now I'm more of a minimalist and want to use my funds for experience more than stuff, so collecting things is sort of down now... except I still collect books signed by the authors.

I am also a Role Player and have been gaming now for 41+ years!!!

Have you been to Europe, then, Leanne? That is so awesome. I didn't know that. Where?

Sunny, I've been to various cities in England like London and Liverpool and Bath. I've been to Paris twice and lots of places in Italy like Rome, Venice, Verona, Vernazza!

This December I'm going to England and Paris again for the third time!

You been there?

No! I've never crossed an ocean in my life. :lol: I can't afford the flight, let alone the stay.

That is so awesome, though. Where are you going in England, this time around?

I would like to travel to three ancestor homes. One in Germany/Swiss boarder, one in England, and another in Scotland. I would take a couple of days at each to see the what was there and the surrounding lands.

If we still had any, that could have been a neat goal for me as well.

Sunny, this time, I'm spending time in London and Bath again and I think two days in Paris. It's hard to decide where to go cause the places I've visited, I always want to go back and experience stuff I skipped the last time. :nod: but there are still new places in Europe to explore.

I also forgot to mention I've been to Amsterdam and Holland area too, why I always forget I went there I have no idea :lol: I got to visit my great uncle's grave... He was killed in WWII so he has been buried in a graveyard for Canadian soldiers in Holland, so it was nice to go see where he is laid to rest :love:

Wow, that all sounds really amazing. Good for you, having seen all of that and being able to go back. :)

I enjoy learning a new skill and then use it to do something. I basically worked with a neighbor to help him build his field stone planters, and after helping him I used those skills and built my own field stone planters in my front and back yards.