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Dating, women and the 'hobby'...


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In my experience there are a reasonable number of women, of a reasonable age range too, interested in railways (as a trip on the Talyllyn in the Summer ought to indicate to anyone - On at least one day in August I think they had a staff composed of more ladies than men) just nothing like as many men. And I can't really see that changing, as quite frankly it does seem to be an pursuit that is of greater interest to men. I like to think, however, that numbers are gradually rising and that perhaps as time goes on things may get a bit closer to an even split, though as I say this is doubtful.

 

Something I have noticed, taking layouts to places where one wouldn't normally take a layout, is that those who have laughed at my hobby previously, male and female, begin to appreciate it more when they see the half-decent result of it. Just an observation.

 

Another, encouraging, thing that I noticed came a few months back when exhibiting my layout Odiham at a school during school hours. We had several year groups come and have a look, and almost universally we had the following outcome - The groups of young lads would come, laugh and make allusions to Thomas the Tank Engine and would be the ones to ask stupid questions. Some of them really did take the p*ss good and proper. The girls, however, actually seemed quite interested in the layout, and not just in the scenic or 'more feminine' side either. They asked the more serious questions, and I think that one of them subsequently joined the local model railway club (though I can't be sure of this as I don't see much of the junior section these days). Certainly a few seemed interested in joining the club, at any rate. 

 

Now, I am unsure of the motivations that may have been at play there, or whether girls are simply better at disguising a lack of interest behind intelligent questions (it's entirely possible, but I hope that wasn't the case) than boys are behind cheap jibes and jokes.

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11 hours ago, sem34090 said:

Now, I am unsure of the motivations that may have been at play there, or whether girls are simply better at disguising a lack of interest behind intelligent questions (it's entirely possible, but I hope that wasn't the case) than boys are behind cheap jibes and jokes.

 

I think it was probably just that boys tend to do this sort of thing to look "big" in front of each other and even more-so when in front of girls. A long time ago when I was a college lecturer, I regularly saw that sort of thing amongst the students. 

 

John

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On 08/01/2013 at 10:16, Ashcombe said:

In my experience, anyone who has a hobby/passion for something/anything is going to be more interesting company than a person with no interests.

By way of encouragement for those still uncertain whether a partner can enter into our hobby, or at least tolerate it, I thought I'd 'update' Sherry's post from 2013. At that time I was still only a few months into being a widower, Sherry and I had known each other slightly at skool, and 18 months later Sherry divorced her worthy-but-dull PhD husband, and a year after that we were married. It took us a couple more years to agree a honeymoon, but this is a picture from it.

 

DSC_0116.jpeg.7effa76d764eb04878512a530dc75f52.jpeg

 

This is at Eisfelder Talmühle on the Harz metre-gauge network. Does the lady look happy?

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I would definitely agree that my good wife tolerates my railway interests on the basis that while I am doing that, I am not doing anything else which she disapproves of even more. She quite likes travelling on trains, not that she does it very much. One of our neighbours was a volunteer on the NVR in its early days, which does no harm. 

 

Compared to the bike racing, it’s cheap and safe. Compared to the tenor banjo playing, it doesn’t fill the house with banjo music... it also doesn’t seem to take place in pubs.

 

She hasn’t yet learnt to distinguish the smell of O Gauge loco smoke from the other noxious vapours emerging from the garage...

 

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2 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

By way of encouragement for those still uncertain whether a partner can enter into our hobby, or at least tolerate it, I thought I'd 'update' Sherry's post from 2013. At that time I was still only a few months into being a widower, Sherry and I had known each other slightly at skool, and 18 months later Sherry divorced her worthy-but-dull PhD husband, and a year after that we were married. It took us a couple more years to agree a honeymoon, but this is a picture from it.

 

DSC_0116.jpeg.7effa76d764eb04878512a530dc75f52.jpeg

 

This is at Eisfelder Talmühle on the Harz metre-gauge network. Does the lady look happy?

Happy and lovely, well done  OD and Sherry(how could you resist a name like that.......hic!!!:jester:), hope you are both very happy...........Mike

Edited by ikks
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4 hours ago, sem34090 said:

Quite frankly they just looked childish and unintelligent, and I think a couple of the girls noticed this and found it amusing...

 

But I suspect you're right.

 

Yes, in my experience too. The girls just thought the boys were stupid and immature when they acted like that.

 

John

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4 hours ago, JJGraphics said:

 

Yes, in my experience too. The girls just thought the boys were stupid and immature when they acted like that.

 

I wonder how many of the p***-taking boys went home that day, dug out their forgotten train sets out of a cupboard and played with them for an hour, but never told their mates?

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13 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

I wonder how many of the p***-taking boys went home that day, dug out their forgotten train sets out of a cupboard and played with them for an hour, but never told their mates?

 

Maybe one or two more than you might expect . . .

 

John

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My next wife will be a train and plane loving saucy young thing , who can ride a bike without complaining about her arse being sore and uses phrases like “ you should have stayed at the pub longer “. And then I woke up.

Edited by rob D2
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On ‎27‎/‎11‎/‎2019 at 21:45, sem34090 said:

...Now, I am unsure of the motivations that may have been at play there, or whether girls are simply better at disguising a lack of interest behind intelligent questions (it's entirely possible, but I hope that wasn't the case) than boys are behind cheap jibes and jokes.

That's women researching an unfamiliar situation. Get him to talk about it, see what this reveals about the person; it is not the subject that is necessarily interesting but what I can learn about the person with this interest. There are varying levels of skill, but the practised art is stunning.

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9 hours ago, rob D2 said:

My next wife will be a train and plane loving saucy young thing , who can ride a bike without complaining about her arse being sore and uses phrases like “ you should have stayed at the pub longer “. And then I woke up.

But why would you be in the pub without her?

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13 hours ago, rob D2 said:

My next wife will be a train and plane loving saucy young thing , who can ride a bike without complaining about her arse being sore and uses phrases like “ you should have stayed at the pub longer “. And then I woke up.

 

Not long after I met Domestic Facilities Management she was watching 'Land Girls'

 

I moaned about the use of MK1's in the scene where they get off the train

 

Later on in the scene where a Spitfire is displaying she looked up and said 'Wrong Mark of Spitfire'

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6 hours ago, johnofwessex said:

 

Not long after I met Domestic Facilities Management she was watching 'Land Girls'

 

I moaned about the use of MK1's in the scene where they get off the train

 

Later on in the scene where a Spitfire is displaying she looked up and said 'Wrong Mark of Spitfire'

She's deffo a keeper, then.  An ex of mine impressed me by understanding the difference between a fixed point and a multiple point cable stay suspension bridge, and she was a horticulturalist...

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5 hours ago, Porkscratching said:

Is going German when you roll up in a tank, and shoot everyone..? :o

( Only kiddin'..honest..)

If you get 3 Welshmen together, they start a choir, with Italians it's an argument, with the Irish it's a fight, and with the French it's a souffle.  3 Germans always invade Poland.

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  • 1 year later...

In our fledgling relationship we spent much time alongside the mainline at either Scout Green or Sunderland Bridge near Durham. I was open and honest about my hobby, for both real trains and models.

Everytime we visit the NRM in York or Shildon, my wife admires my enthusiasm and love of trains.

 

Now, 35 years later, my granddaughter wants me to take her to the Tanfield or Weardale railways or on a trip on the ‘big and long’ red and white trains on the ECML. She wants to help in her own way with building my layout.

 

Christmas this year has the new Hornby Class 91 ‘For the fallen’ and a rake of TPE Mk5’s on my list from SWMBO, might be Easter before I see them though.

 

There may be a stigma about our hobby in many peoples eyes, but I can think the same about many other pursuits but don’t.

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I think the stigma is very largely a thing of the past; certainly I don't get any grief from the fairly blokey crowd up the pub. and they are happy to engage on technical aspects of how such and such has been achieved or, in the case of some of the older ones, aspects of jobs they had years ago on the docks or in the steelworks.  A ruffytuffy biker gave me considerable help with working up an Oxford BSA 350 single and sidecar, and was amazed when I brought the finished product in to the pub to show off; he'd been thinking more of something in about 1/24th or 1/16th, and was impressed at the details I'd managed to 'suggest' on this tiny model.

 

It may be that the nerd world of fat keyboard warriors wearing Star Trek or Comic Book (sorry, graphic novel) cozzies has deflected some of the scorn of those who have nothing better to, not that the nerds deserve it any more than we did, or any other group of people identifiable as specific for the purpose of publicly ridiculing so that morons can assert their normality and 'blend in'. 

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