vicarious railway

Progress towards any sort of model railway layout of my own is glacial at best. I am fulfilling some of my desires in the hobby by both working on and operating other people's layouts. A few benefits to this approach readily become apparent;

1) I don't have to pay for any of the materials,
2) I get to experiment with many different construction techniques,
3) I don't have to re-stage all of the trains at the end of a session, and
4) the mess is always at someone else's home :-).

There are too many fascinating aspects of the hobby to permit indulging in all of them in one person's lifetime. So far, however, the vicarious path is allowing me (or will shortly allow me) to participate in Maine-inspired 2', Swiss electric, turn-of-the-century branchline, modern unit train, large scale industrial, and several fallen-flag representations in varying degrees of accuracy and complexity.

This region seems to be particularly blessed with modellers of superior skill and widely ranging interests; sort of a railway cornucopia. I don't think I could have deliberately chosen a richer area in which to pursue the hobby.