If you’re like me (a train enthusiast who builds models, not a modeler who likes trains), I think you’ll agree that HOW we view and interact with trains is a big influence on our choices in the hobby. While some folks have more constant interests, I’ve found that mine change as the ways I experience trains has changed.
Farmrail is always going to be something special to me because of the connection to home, and I can’t see myself ever NOT modeling it. That said, there’s been a constant interest in railroading that I’ve had for years and never shaken: Amtrak.
When Genesis and I were newly married, she was in law school in Oklahoma City while I was at Fort Hood, TX. I’d take the Heartland Flyer north on long weekends to see her. It was the Heartland Flyer that brought me home on leave after my first deployment.
My lovely bride (and now my daughters) have humored me and let me plan family vacations around train trips. So the miles racked up. Southwest Chief… Capitol Limited… Silver Star… Silver Meteor… Empire Builder… Palmetto… Keystone Service… California Zephyr. Quickly, some of my favorite memories were those of seeing the country, with the ones I loved most, from the window of a train.
When I took Sasha to visit Oklahoma for the first time, riding with the Farmrail crew was the highlight. But retracing the rails I rode as a newlywed 7 years earlier, now with my oldest child, was important too.
But on another note, how I railfanned had changed. Before, I loved chasing down obscure short lines and industrial spurs. Combing the internet for information on operations and obsessively studying satellite images. But as life got busy, time for that faded away. But while living in Aberdeen, NC, I always knew how to get my train fix. See, our house there is two blocks from the tracks, and I learned time my morning run so that I’d meet the northbound Silver Star trackside. Just a few seconds of admiring the train thunder by before returning to my jog… but man, its always cool.
The romance of passenger trains only increased when we moved to California. We made multiple treks down to Disneyland on the Pacific Surfliner. And when my wife insisted I get out of the house on a semester break before I went stir crazy, I went to see my good friend Jeremy in Chicago and cashed in all my Amtrak points on a 4 day/3 night odyssey from Chicago to California on the Empire Builder and Coast Starlight.
As my railfanning changed, so did my modeling interests. 15 minutes of switching was enough for an operating session. I realized I just wanted to watch a train smoothly run through nice scenery. I wanted to see some passenger trains, with prototypical consists. Try as a might, I couldn’t reconcile that in HO scale with our transient life and limited space. So I somewhat reluctantly ordered a Kato N scale Pacific Surfliner, and a Bachmann Charger to go with it, and found myself hooked. This thing runs great, and the family loves watching it make loops. I’m still firming up what this project looks like precisely, but stay tuned, it should be fun!
Red Dirt and Rails 
Great post Alex! It is always important to understand what and why we want to model a railroad. You have hit a good blend of modeling what brings you good memories of your interaction with the prototype.
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