I'm beginning to like this place.

[jwb]

There are different approaches to the hobby besides layout size and such as well. Part of it is how much people expect of themselves, as far as how much research and thinking they're willing to do, how hard they're willing to work on a particular project, how much they're willing to budget for the hobby, how much care they take with the photos they post, and so forth. There are many different model railroading forums on the web, and they tend to have different levels of expectation -- on some of them, nobody cares if the guys can't spell, if the photos are just out-of-the-blue-box Athearns they picked up at a swap (and poorly lit at that), and so forth. The standard on this forum is a lot higher than that, which is probably why people are giving you a hard time over some things! For that matter, there are many different hobby choices -- I would think that a lawyer of 49 might more likely be thinking of motorcycles and sports cars, for instance.

But if you do get interested in model railroads, it's probably a better idea to start with something other than scratch-built large-scale science fiction subway cars on an asteroid.