I was asked that question recently by a person who is not in the hobby. I think he was sort of interested in model railroading as a pastime, and I wanted to encourage him. At the same time, I felt it necessary to be honest. That led me to pursue the truth: What does it take?

The obvious answers come quickly. You need to like trains and appreciate what they are and what they mean to our nation. Without that, I doubt that you’ll last in the hobby very long. You really need to be inquisitive. Over the two hundred year life of railroading, a frightening amount of train knowledge has been generated. While it is possible to locate much of it, you can’t always find exactly what you want at your fingertips just when you need it. So you have to be persistent.

It really helps if you have a mechanical aptitude. From kit building to track laying to electrical operation to scenery and building construction to knowledge of railroading practices, it all requires some mechanical ability. Most of us arrive at the hobby without much more than a willingness and an interest in mechanical things. We learn our way in.

Model railroaders of the past often arrived directly from real railroads, bringing with them a wealth of train lore and factual knowledge. It’s nice if you have that, but it isn’t necessary. I’ve spent the past fifty years struggling with the subject of railroading, and every time I learn something new, along comes the awareness that there are a dozen more things I don’t know. My trains run pretty good, all things taken around, so I don’t worry about the incompleteness of my knowledge.

A woman on the city council in a small, coastal California city proposed getting rid of the tender on a locomotive that was on display in a city park. Her reason? “We don’t need two of those train things in the park. One of them is enough.” She wouldn’t make a very good model railroader.

That means attitude is a big part of model railroading. I’ve seen a hundred guys start into the hobby and end up not sticking to it. Some put their trains in a box and forgot about them and others sold off what they had. They had a thousand excuses, often hammering at the cost of being in the hobby. Well, I can’t say this is a cheap hobby. Come to think of it, what is a cheap hobby? I saw a guy flying kites, and he had a couple of thousand into that one.

No, it isn’t the price. It’s the attitude. The real model railroader takes an almost childish delight in the sight of trains, real and model. As they learn new things about railroads, they bring it to their layouts, and as they add new things to their layouts, that spurs another round of research. Would it surprise you to learn that most people in one of the railroad hobbies is also in several of them?

I used to ask kids to draw pictures of what they thought was going on in the cab of a locomotive. Many of them drew steering wheels and brake pedals. Besides the fact that they had obviously never been in an engine cab, there was also the reality that they don’t know how trains are steered. (A lot of adults have the same limitation.) With some patience and some large-scale cars, I got them to understand that the flanged wheels work with the rails to steer the trains. After they caught onto this, they suddenly began to see that many cars can be fastened together somehow and will follow one after the other.

As this knowledge becomes theirs, it is very interesting to almost see the gears turning in their heads, pondering the possibilities. Yes, the weakness of trains is that they can only go where the tracks go. Yes, the strength of trains is that two guys can operate a train over two miles long. Trains are about economical transportation, and they are doggone fun to watch.

Model railroaders are the sort of people who hope to be stuck at a grade crossing while a long train passes. Over time, they begin to learn the logos and reporting marks, often trotting out very arcane knowledge in a casual way. Put a quartet of train guys in the same car and this becomes party time. “The eighty-six thousand series of boxcars were built by ACF back in nineteen seventy-two,” says one guy.

“It was seventy-four,” asserts another from the back seat. Like I say, party time. I have to admit I find that sort of thing to be fun. I try not to be disappointed when most of the other guys know more than me. I’m just glad I know what I do. I feebly add, “Most of them have gone to scrap now.” The others nod their heads in agreement, and here come some Airflow hoppers to change the subject.

Model railroaders tend to be a peaceful bunch. Getting angry and throwing things doesn’t help anything. Guys who do that or have to stage train wrecks just don’t last in the hobby. Someone once described a railroad as just a large collection of problems to be solved. Model railroads aren’t any different. If you don’t like solving problems, you probably won’t like modeling trains.

I know you were expecting me to give out a list of skills required, and those are important, but really, model railroading is a place where you can learn how to do those things. I belong to a large-scale club and recently participated in a workshop where I learned how to prune dwarf Alberta spruces. As I watch my HO club work on their new layout, I learn about things I never thought about before. I’ve never done Styrofoam scenery, but after watching them at work, I think I could do that.

So it’s all about how it makes you feel. I know a guy who doesn’t have a layout; his wife doesn’t want such a thing in her house. He does have a den with a display case of his favorite models, a bookshelf of very good railroad books, a rack of train videos, and a computer where he can dig around to his heart’s content. His collection of models makes him a model railroader, too, and a very happy one. That’s what it takes to be a model railroader.