Help
Are you already having difficulty reconciling the above article with the photo at left? I know that I am.
Speaking as a totally frustated locomotive engineer / union officer, I can see how playing with toy trains could be condusive to mental health. I could create scenes lambasting the company and its stupid management in ways too sick to relate here. I guess that Dr. Brandt would call this a step in the right direction.
Doc Brandt points out that "With adults, train-playing brings out their persecution complexes", and with children, "Trains intensify traits of rebelliousness and agressiveness". Curiously, though, he thinks that "railroad hobbyists are about as close to normalty as any group" that he knows. Of course, being a psychoanalyst, he spends most of his time hanging around paranoid-delusionals.
Personally, I think that model railroaders and railroad foamers are just plain weird (note: I'm both), and I wonder if even the Good Doctor might chnage his tune if confonted with the "Bridge Over the River Ka Ka" pic. Lets face it, folks, this flatly is "A Bridge Too Far [out]".
By way of documentation: A fellow engineer (thanks, Howie!) sent me the toilet pic without identifying the proud owner of this model railroad. If it's somebody that I work with, I don't want to know. Back in about 1971, by dear Aunt Gladys forwarded to me the article, which she had clipped from a Dallas newspaper. I believe that, at the time, my family was engaged in a desperate attempt to legitimize my peculiar behavior, and that they eventually gave up. - E.O.