What is the point of Model Railways?

[Classsix T]

9 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

I used to enjoy QI but eventually I was turned off for the same reason I switched off Have I Got News for You and stopped reading Private Eye, it went from rather clever and insightful humour which could be quite informative to majoring on supercilious sneering.

The "left" of which I count myself, has had this distasteful undercurrent of moral superiority since 1997 I believe. In opposition we had the high ground, morally, but the tides have changed and once staunch leftists (Ben Elton et al) are now more interested in shifting books and musicals to the upper middle classes rather than holding up the mirror to society that equilibrium in earnings or ending child poverty should be a priority.

 

C6T.

[billbedford]

Since 1997?

 

The "left" has always had the moral superiority to know what's best for other people. Here is a quote from Machiavelli that shows such sentiments. 

 

Quote

 

Machiavelli, standing at the dawn of the modern era, saw that there were going to be two modes of governance from here on in to pick from, and more or less everything could be understood in those terms.

 

These two modes of governance are that of the Republic and the Principality. In the former, government represents the people, and gives effect to their norms and values on the basis that it respects those norms and values – it considers the people to be imbued with the capacity to govern themselves, by and large, and seeks therefore to create the conditions in which they are able to do so. In the latter, government rules the people: it governs them for their own good on the basis that without it they are corrupt, weak, incapable and immoral, and need government to rescue them from that predicament.

 

 

[Reorte]

I agree with the sentiment but it's going to get the thread locked if we're not careful, it's veering a bit political.

[billbedford]

Oh, which party did Machiavelli support?

[jacko]

14 minutes ago, billbedford said:

Oh, which party did Machiavelli support?

The Wild party.

[RichardT]

2 minutes ago, billbedford said:

Oh, which party did Machiavelli support?

Well, as he lived centuries before the terms “left” and “right” were invented in their political sense, and similarly many many years before the concepts that they represent had anything like their modern meanings and resonances, your quotation - or rather attribution - isn’t really pertinent in this context.

 

None of which has anything to do with QI.

[Halvarras]

18 hours ago, C126 said:

I hear the latest reason is 'postponing dementia'.  I am all for that.

 

I'd like to think there's something in that. Like everyone else I'm very Impressed at the current round of RTR models, but somebody else has done all the work. I've enjoyed modifying OO stuff over coming on for six decades and my imagination can still get sparked enough by something to want to take on the challenge. This usually involves initial feasibility calculations, then cutting and filing plastic and plasticard to very fine tolerances to see if I can get the thing I've pictured in my head into 4mm 3D reality, with the accompanying sense of achievement. I believe this helps the ol' grey matter to keep firing on all cylinders!

 

The other measure of mental capacity, in my case at least, is a good memory for numbers (and dates, a gift which both impresses and annoys my Other Half in equal measure 😀!) For example 55 years ago today I visited Bristol Temple Meads for the first time......as it happens! I also have an encyclopedic knowledge of the liveries of the WR diesel-hydraulic fleet - which as some will know is no simple subject - and much else besides. I don't say this to boast about it or claim that this is in any way a unique ability, just that while I can still remember such details I know that the brain cells are still in good working order. I believe that having a lifelong absorbing hobby has contributed to this.

[Buhar]

48 minutes ago, Halvarras said:

For example 55 years ago today I visited Bristol Temple Meads for the first time......as it happens! I also have an encyclopedic knowledge of the liveries of the WR diesel-hydraulic fleet

Pretty good - but can you remember what you went upstairs for.😉

Alan 

[C126]

Re  delaying dementia; I chatted to a retired doctor at one of the Princes Risborough exhibitions at his stand giving publicity to this finding, seen by me subsequently at the last Warley.  I hope he is attending other exhibitions.

 

The Dr explained it was the need to keep finding new solutions to problems that kept the dementia at bay in modellers.  So many hobbies are largely repetition, which does not perform the same delaying action.  As one with a dismal memory - not quite the same thing - I am all for lessening the effects of old age as long as possible.

 

 

[Reorte]

As far as I can tell anything that keeps the brain working, keeping you thinking helps to put dementia off.

[Halvarras]

6 hours ago, Buhar said:

Pretty good - but can you remember what you went upstairs for.😉

Alan 

 

Oh yes!

 

Well, usually......🥴

 

My problem with stairs is normally a lack of forward planning - if I have more than one item to carry up or down the stairs I seem to have to do it one item at a time, separated by a "D'oh!!" I tell myself that the Universe has decreed that it's meant to be this way as I need the exercise 😁 !

[JohnR]

My wife watches a lot of health related content, and shared with me a podcast with a GP, discussing mental health and how it impacts on physical health.

 

The GP described how when we do things that we love, it improves our mental and physical health. He used the example of a man who came to him, feeling low, lacking energy, etc. After a short discussion, he asked him if there was anything he enjoyed doing. On being told there wasn't, he further asked was there anything you did when you were younger? He said he used to enjoy playing with his train set, but it had been in his parents loft for years. "Well, get that out then".

 

He didn't see him again, but when 3 months later spoke to the mans wife, she told him that her husband was a changed man, he had got out his train set, and was now building a proper set, tinkering with it several nights a week, his mood had improved and he had much more energy more generally. 

 

 

[The Johnster]

My railway, Cwmdimbath, is therapeutic on several levels.  It is a mental exercise, running the timetable to real  time at realistic speeds. planning and executing projects. researching, and so on, and keeps my otherwise declining hand-eye co-ordination in working order.  As I am diagnosed clinically depressed, it is a needed  positive reinforcement of self and self-image in a world which provides me with very little of that; in short, it is good for me.

 

I have recently taken up drone flying and filming, which is also good for me in several ways.  It gets me out and about, and it requires planning, including observing weather forecasts and tides, a way of connecting me with the natural world that I have lacked in recent years.  It also prevents my spatial awarness from diminishing and atrophying in my dotage; you have to know where your drone is and where it's going in 3 dimensions, and do several things at once.  Because it requires absolute concentration, it is very relaxing because the problems of your real life (and I have plenty of those) are put aside and forgotten when you are flying.  Apart from that it's just as pointless as model railways.

 

Everything's pointless.  You didn't ask to be born but you were, so you live, then you die; that's it (I have no belief in an afterlife or reincarnation).  Because death is fairly scary (though it is becoming less scary than immortality as I get older, to quote Freddie, who was circling the drain himself at the time, 'Do you want to live forever?'; no. most certainly not), you distract yourself with activities to keep yourself alive, raise a family, do things you like doing, but have do things you don't like doing in order to pay for it all, especially if you're on the mortgage treadmill.  Treadmills, like train sets and the M25, go round and round, pointlessly.  I don't think hobbies are any more or less pointless than any other activity, certainly no more or less so than pursuing a career in order to increase someone else's profits, or buying a property to raise a family in only to lose home and family in a divorce, or exercising to keep fit then letting it go to seed and fat as you get older and less energetic, so the question as raised by the QI contestant, not meant to be taken seriously anyway IMHO, was itself pointless.  At least I enjoy my pointless layout and drone.  I'd be a nihilist, but there's no point...

[DaveF]

My hobbies - railway modelling, photography, natural history, puzzles and reading are simply things I enjoy and which give me some enjoyable challenges to exercise my mind ( and for photography and natural history) my body as well.  Natural history, basically identifying and finding out as much as I can about plants animals I come across has been an interest since I was a small child which led to my doing a degree in Biology.  Listening to/watching  German/French radio and TV also exercises my brain and makes me think.

 

They have all helped me deal with stress over the years - work, family issues and health.

 

As I get older I do a bit less of each but they are still all enjoyable and give me pleasure.  There is only one real problem - fitting everything onto a day, like many retired people I don't know how I had time to go to work.

 

David

[Reorte]

Mental health is general is one of those things society likes to bleat on about being so much more aware of, yet continues to alter itself in ways that are utterly detrimental to it. See most "improvements" and "progress" (in at least non-social issues). We just pile on more and more pressure, try to make ourselves more and more disconnected from the sort of world we've evolved to be able to mentally deal with, and try to pretend that people who suffer from that need curing, rather than it being the result of a colossal screw-up.

 

And before someone tries to think they're being clever that's not an argument that there was some mythical perfect past either.

[EddieB]

On 19/07/2024 at 18:22, Reorte said:

As far as I can tell anything that keeps the brain working, keeping you thinking helps to put dementia off.

In other words, the antithesis of watching vacuous "celebrities" on the BBC?

[Clive Mortimore]

As you get older, doing physical and mental stimulating activities does help both your physical and mental health but does not prevent dementia.

 

Dementia is not a mental illness, it is a physical one where the brain shrinks and loses it effectiveness. Most people with dementia die when unwell with another physical illness, chest infection, pressure sores that won't heal, malnutrition, dehydration etc etc very few die because their brain function is unable to support the other vital organs. I cared for many people with dementia during my nursing career.