What has this hobby taught you?

[nachoman]

One compliment I frequently hear about this hobby is how it bridges together many different disciplines, such as construction, arts and crafts, history, and electricity. I'm curious, what specifically have you learned or learned how to do as a result of this hobby that you would not likely have learned otherwise, yet you use in other areas of your life besides model railroading?

A big one for me would be electronic knowledge. The past few weeks I have been tinkering around with building a laser guitar (a guitar that plays like a regular guitar but has laser beams instead of strings). I don't think I would ever have had much electronics interest if it wasn't for trying to build small electronic gismos for my model trains as a teen. Sure, I liked to tinker around with everything, but I doubt my interest in motors and electric circuits would have developed if it wasn't for trying to figure out how my trains worked and how to make them work better.

Believe it or not, this hobby has even modified my political viewpoint on some issues. When reading about the area I am modeling, I realized some of the same political issues that the region faces now are the same as they were 100 years ago. When I read 100 year old accounts, it is nearly the same as what is in the newspaper today. And yet, the same solutions that were tried 100 years ago are being proposed again today! If the same thing didn't work 100 years ago, why would it be any different today?! In other words, this hobby led me to investigate a political isue that I no longer see a simple solution for. Funny how that works.

And, it helped with my last job. As a result of my curiosity and knowledge of railroad history, I posed a question regarding the disposition of land after a railroad right of way is abandoned. This caused a small hubbub at the Department of Justice, and resulted in a court delay that forced the federal government to re-examine their data. Had my task been assigned to someone without railroad knowledge, I doubt the issue would have been caught.

So how about you? How has this hobby affected your non-railroad life?