Women and model trains

[Tom]

There was another young lady (Traingirl) who was a VERY good and clever modeller, who posted on TrainOrders.com, but she was innundated with idiot, offensive, posts from guys who thought that a girl shouldn't be able to make, and paint, models better than they could - and literally drove her away, with their attitude and messages. Discrimination by sex is not dead - unfortunately - though several members got booted off the forum for it.

Yeah, that was sad, Leanne is/was a great, naturally talented modeler. Some of those guys over on Trainorders can be real asses. Most are great, but some are blithering IDIOT FOAMERS. It didn't help too though that she had VERY thin skin and a little bit of a self esteem issue. I really enjoyed her posts though and the photos were fantastic. It was refreshing to see a teenaged girl into model railroading.

I have three gorgeous nieces, two teenaged and one pre-teen who have a thing for vintage passenger cars, and are chomping at the bit to join their brother & cousin Dustin (16 years old) in cleaning adn restoring the interiors of Business Cars and California Zephyr cars at the WP RR Museum in Portola. My sister took them up and they were HOOKED. Really surprised me, so I'm going to take full advantage of that as a Board member and proud uncle, but I'll have to keep a close eye on them as some of our guys can get a little "out there"

My fiance is not only one of the museum's more active volunteers, she is also a modeler herself, and spends more money on model railroading than *I* do. Her thing though is scenery, she's too afraid to detail models of locomotives and cars (long manicured fingernails). She prefers scenery and placing structures. So I build them, she arranges, details, and "landscapes" as she calls it. She is madly in love with On30 though, and if she had her way, the HO would all sit in their display cabinets and I'd scrap the layout in favor of a logging road in On30.