Joel’s Diary

What’s in a Hobby

So my latest hobby is Trains. It’s what you get if you live in a country with one of the busiest and densest rail networks in the world, and you also commute to school for 90 min each way, each day for a whole school year. Luckily my commute is down to 22 min by train (plus some biking and walking to get to stations) but it’s stayed: I’ve joined a real community of railfans, especially on the internet. I also volunteer now at a organization for the preservation of old trains.

So what’s this railfan hobby? Well, everyone has their own way of filling it in. Some like numbers: which trainset is in which service and so on. There’s even a webapp that’s dedicated to this and tracking the trains throughtout the system. Some like pictures: and there’s whole galleries online dedicated to that also. For me, it’s a combination: I am pretty active on a few forums (highest one has about 10.34 posts/day from me) and I take pictures. I’m also working on my goal of travelling the whole network: I’ve got quite some stretches to go, but there’s always other stuff to travel to as well: new stations, types of train equipments, and new transport companies!