Build a model railway and bond with your children

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Many of todays social problems have their root in the changing ways families interact and live their lives. Many children find themselves walking the streets, and the boredom from that often leads them into trouble. The reasons for this are complex and it is not my aim to analyse the social breakdown of families.
I would like to highlight a great hobby ,or activity, to help parents bond with their children. The activity I am talking about is building a model railway. It is a hobby that can start from very modest beginnings and over time, can blossom into a massive, spectacular and enthrawling project.
The beauty of it is that is a hobby that can be shared between parents and children. The complexity and problem solving; the creativity and designing; the practical skills of realising the model, can all be shared between parent and child. Infact, without mutual support it is unlikely that the hobby will make much progress.
Too many children retreat into the world of interactive computor games, which are at best moulding children into anti-social beings, and at worst, de-sensitising them to the violence and sex, which are so often integral to the games children are playing, in the isolation of their bedrooms. Other children are subjected to hours of DVD and trashy TV, as their “busy” parents find an easy solution to keeping their off-spring occupied.
I would thoroughly recommend building a model railway as an alternative to the negative children’s experiences I have just described. The initial interest in the hobby could be stimulated by a rail journey to a place of interest. Perhaps a visit to a railway museum, or one of the many model railway exhibitions. Visiting a model railway exhibition is guarenteed to fire the imagination and enthusiasm of almost any child.
From the initial stimulus activity, there are many starter kits available in the shops or on line, that can be bought fairly inexpensively.
Already you have started to bond more with your child or children, as you have spent time together visiting places of interest. This bonding will increase over time as you share experiences and bounce ideas off each other, as you build your first model railway. Surely this makes more sense than just enouraging your child into the anti-social life of computor games, or wandering the neighbourhood streets.

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Model railroad at DB museum, Nuremberg

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Build a model railroad and bond with your children

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A model railway based on a fictional location ...

A model railway based on a fictional location in the United States. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Build a Model Railroad and bond with your children.

I would like to highlight a great hobby, or activity, to help parents bond with their children. The activity I am talking about is building a model railroad. It is a hobby that can start from very modest beginnings and over time, can blossom into a massive, spectacular and enthrawling project.

Many of todays social problems have their root in the changing ways families interact and live their lives. Many children find themselves walking the streets, and the boredom from that often leads them into trouble. The reasons for this are complex and it is not my aim to analyse the social breakdown of families.
The beauty of it is that is a hobby that can be shared between parents and children. The complexity and problem solving; the creativity and designing; the practical skills of realising the model, can all be shared between parent and child. Infact, without mutual support it is unlikely that the hobby will make much progress.
Too many children retreat into the world of interactive computor games, which are at best moulding children into anti-social beings, and at worst, de-sensitising them to the violence and sex, which are so often integral to the games children are playing, in the isolation of their bedrooms. Other children are subjected to hours of DVD and trashy TV, as their “busy” parents find an easy solution to keeping their off-spring occupied.
I would thoroughly recommend building a model railway as an alternative to the negative children’s experiences I have just described. The initial interest in the hobby could be stimulated by a rail journey to a place of interest. Perhaps a visit to a railway museum, or one of the many model railway exhibitions. Visiting a model railroad exhibition is guarenteed to fire the imagination and enthusiasm of almost any child.
From the initial stimulus activity, there are many starter kits available in the shops or on line, that can be bought fairly inexpensively.
Already you have started to bond more with your child or children, as you have spent time together visiting places of interest. This bonding will increase over time as you share experiences and bounce ideas off each other, as you build your first model railroad. Surely this makes more sense than just enouraging your child into the anti-social life of computor games, or wandering the neighbourhood streets.  Come on, what are you waiting for: Begin to build that model railroad and start to form a lasting and satisfying bond with your children.

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Where to build your model railroad

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Where to build a model railroad.

When you make the decision to go ahead and build a model railroad there are many things to consider.  Like a military campaign, you must plan for the expected, and also for the unexpected.

English: Model railroad, Washington State Hist...

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One of the most important aspects of building a model railroad is the location of where you will actually construct your railroad layout. Will your model railroad be constructed in a spare room in your house?  Perhaps it will be made in the garage? Or a cellar ? Another popular option is the loft or roof space.  You could also build it in an outbuilding or even in your garden itself.

Each of the locations I have described have advantages and disadvantages which all have to be investigated before starting to construct your model railroad.  For example, it is essential to have an electricity power supply available, with a number of power sockets available. This may seem obvious, however it is an essential aspect of planning.  Without a safe and reliable power supply you have no working model railroad!

Once you have established that you have a safe and reliable electricity supply, you also need to ensure you have an adequate amount of lighting.  This may come from windows but it will be likely that you cannot rely on natural light alone.  Once again you need to ensure that you have adequate and safe lighting.

At this stage you may decide to have one source of light for building and maintenance, and a further source for the actual running of the trains on your railroad.  You may think of this second source almost as the equivalent to stage lighting in the theatre.  You are creating a scene and an important aspect of the design will be having the correct ambient light, in order to show your model railroad at its best.

A further consideration would be the position of any doors in the room that you are planning on building your rail road model in.  Doors are a major nuisance for the railroad modeller.  Although absolutely essential for entrance to a room, they also present a major obstacle to the continuity of a railroad. There are many ingenious methods of traversing a door, many of which involve movable sections, or flip up sections.  However they all present problems of connecting the rails and electrical supply up.

One advantage of a roof space or loft model railroad is that with careful planning, you may be able to enter the middle of the layout from a ladder from the floor below.  This negates the need for flip up sections with their continuity problems.

The bottom line is that doors can be a major headache for the model railroad enthusiast, and careful planning at an early stage, can help avoid many problems later in the build.  If you would like more important information to help you build the model railroad of your dreams click here.

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Model Railroad Layouts – Modern day or Historical?

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Railroad Layouts – Modern day or Historical?

One of the first questions that needs to be answered when you start to build your railroad layout is that of whether to try to model a historical moment in time, or not to have a specific time era.

In other words, are you going to build a railroad layout that is historically accurate to a particular time and place in the world?  For example, you may decide to build a model based on the final days of steam in the 1960′s in Great Britain, or perhaps build a model of a Great Western Railway branchline set in 1930′s England.

Alternately you may just want to build an interesting train layout, not specific to any particular country or time period.  This would “allow” you to run The Mallard through the Channel Tunnel on the same line as modern day high speed french trains.

It all depends on what your intentions are, and how seriously you intend to take your hobby.  It may be you are just building a train layout to share with your young son, and the historical accuracy is of no importance.  The real fun is in just running trains on a track.

Alternately, your interest may be in accurately recreating a “snapshot” in time of a bygone era.  Some people take the accuracy to enormous lengths, carrying out massive ammounts of research before even starting to design the train layout.

The important thing is that you clarify your intentions before you start the designing of your layout.  Unless you are absolutely clear about what you are intending to create, then your whole project will lack direction.

If you are intent on going along the “snapshot” in time route, then it is essential that you carry out some historical research before you start the design work.  Effort put in at this stage will more than pay off later.  However, if you are only interested in building a railroad layout to run a random selection of trains, then the historical research will not really be necessary.

One other point to take into consideration would be that at some point in the future, you might wish to convert the “unhistorical” railroad layout into something more specialised, as your interest in model trains grows.  This would mean building in a degree of flexibility for change into the design of your layout, at the design stage.  To help avoid the most common mistakes that beginners make when designing and building model railroad layouts, I recommend you check this excellent instantly downloadable ebook.  Click here now!

English: Number 4468 Mallard in York.jpg Magya...

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Build your first model train layout

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model train set

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Flying Scotsman, Shildon 21 Oct 2004

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Build your first model train layout

Building a model train is the ambition of many a man, who never seemed to have the time, money, space or expertise when they were a young boy.  Perhaps when they were younger they did have a small oval track with a couple of buildings and one train.  The ambition was always there to extend and improve the model train, but in reality it never happened.

There would be a number of reasons for this.  Probably there was no space available as a bedroom had to be shared with a younger brother, who had a habit of standing on every toy the boy owned.  Pocket money was always in short supply and had to fund many different sports and pastimes. Toy shops were expensive places where a generous uncle or grand parent was needed to fund any major purchases.

The world conspired against young boys with big ideas.  The creative mind was not able to flourish due to lack of resources.  The Flying Scotsman was forever destined to travel in short circles round the living room floor.  The only scenery was that which could be built with boyhood imagination, turning model trains into the real live steam engines remembered from films and early visits to the local station.

However, once the young boy has grown into a man, and perhaps has a son of his own, then many of the barriers to building the dreamed about model train layout, have now been removed.  You can build the model train for your son.  It does not matter that he has never seen a real steam train.  He will love it.  And so will you.

The only thing holding you back is where to start.  You have big ambitions and you want to do things right first time.  You now have the time, the space, the energy, some finance but you are lacking just the technical knowledge of where to start.

To avoid all the expensive mistakes, both in terms of time and money,  that beginners usually make when starting out to build their own model railway layouts, I recommend “model trains for beginners”. This series of books is an absolute no brainer for anybody considering investing in this hobby.  Check it out now by clicking here.

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