How did a model railroad hobby turn into a YouTube channel and a new passion?
It started in October, 2016. I had been a model railroader for 20 years. I had always desired to give back to the hobby in some way. I wanted to publish in one of the major hobby publications. I would write well enough. My problem, however, was two fold. First, I never had a layout that was far enough along in scenery to be subject for the quality of photos that was desired by such publications to illustrate an article. Second, I did not at that time have the quality camera or the photography skills necessary to produce such photos. Fast forward to autumn, 2016.
My wife is a high school English teacher. As such she has been the sponsor of numerous extracurricular activities at school–journalism, yearbook, speech and debate, etc. As her husband, I tend to get involved in some of these activities as an outside sponsor and often as a driver. One October weekend in 2016 I was enlisted to drive the speech and debate team to a two-day competition. We drove to the event on Friday afternoon, spent the night there, and participated in competition all day on Saturday. There I was, stuck in a high school cafeteria for 8 hours with nothing to do and only a laptop and wifi password to entertain me.
Up until this time I was a very casual YouTube user. I had discovered YouTube around 2008 when someone sent me a link to a sketch by a person who would become one of my favorite comedians. From that point I watched comedy on YouTube, used it to help DIY projects like fixing my clothes dryer, and I posted a few video clips taken on my phone just to share with family and friends. As a model railroader I had somehow never considered model railroading as a YouTube topic. I didn’t know what I was missing. Shortly before this time I had posted one video tour of my layout on the Facebook group I had created for my layout. Again, I posted it really to share with family and frineds.
I don’t know now exactly how it happened, but somehow on that October day I ran across a YouTube channel dedicated to model railroading. If I named the channel I am sure you would be familiar with it. The channel posted monthly videos approximately 45 minutes to an hour in length consisting of a variety of content–some prototype trains, some model railroad how-to, some photography segments, etc. At the time that channel had about 48 videos published and I binge-watched every one of them. I remember what I thought and felt as I watched. Being a visual learner, I was very excited to know that such content existed. I remember being intrigued by the photography segments, learning several tips that helped me in my photography. What I remember most, however, was watching the modeling how-to segments and thinking, “I could do that…and I could do it better.” I hope that doesn’t sound overly arrogant, but I knew in my mind that there was a way in front of me that I could give back to the hobby.
I filed this information in the back of my mind, and for the next few months I would ponder the possibilities. I had long thought about the possibility of one day opening a model railroad shop that focused on my scale of choice, N. I had always thought it would be clever to us the “N” of N scale in place of the word “in” or “and” in a store name–Trains N Scale; Model Train N Hobby Supply; Ron’s Trains N Things…HMMMMM. Continuing to follow this thought line as I dreamed of a YouTube channel, I began to think of tag lines. What would be a catchy intro that would be memorable? The first piece of my YouTube puzzle that fell into place was the line, “Hi. I’m Ron of Ron’s Trains N Things…”
Over the next few months I also began to explore the world of model railroad YouTube channels. I found several that I began to watch and follow, but one of my favorite at the time was my friend Eric Hall’s channel, IMRROcom. When I discovered Eric’s channel he was hosting a video model building contest, The Big Build Contest v2. Well, the timing seemed perfect. I could think of no better time nor reason to start my channel than to enter Eric’s contest…and thus Ron’s Trains N Things was born. I created the 3 required videos for the contest and they were well received. Then I followed those with a tree-making tutorial which became very popular. (Today that video has nearly 200k views.) The rest, as they say, is history. I could never have imagined how the channel would grow in those early months. Nor could I have imagined that 8 years later I would be creating videos full time as a retirement career–yet here we are…and it all started with a Saturday of binge-watching model railroad videos on YouTube.
