Cats & Trains

My husband has recently gotten into model trains. He has fond memories of working on layouts and such from his childhood and I figured after over 10 years of talking about it he probably won't lose interest after 6 months. He's working with "N" Scale trains which are on the small side - works better since we live in townhome and the only space he can have (I'll let him have ) is the dining room which is a pretty small space.

He thought he was getting a new hobby but he didn't know that he would have two calicos who are as obsessed with the trains as he is! Here are a few shots from the first night he set up a small, one loop track just to make them go.

(Please excuse the mess - he just pushed stuff aside to get the space cleared out and obviously we had been shopping & the bags ended up on the couch...)

The trains...




The feline reaction...

Ginger Cookie is obsessed!





Annie looks like she's casually watching, but it's much more than casual. She's earned the nickname "Go-Go-Catzilla" (from the Blue Oyster Cult song Godzilla) for her midnight cavorting in the railyard!





These are the first videos I've taken, so it's pretty wobbly. Ginger looks like she's watching a tennis match!

Click on the pictures to load the movies
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v99/valanhb/?action=view&current=MVI_3198.mp4

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v99/valanhb/?action=view&current=MVI_3202.mp4

That was amazing little train to set up, I thought the kitties gonna play with it! They are surely waiting until the train is fully operational!

Looks like quite the kitty entertainment! Very beautiful girls!

Ginger Cookie looks completely fascinated...New cat toy!

Best. kitteh. TV. EVER! That's what Ginger seems to be saying.

Cool train cute cat

Originally Posted by myfamiliars

Best. kitteh. TV. EVER! That's what Ginger seems to be saying.

Click to expand...

That's it exactly!

She won't get too close, as opposed to Catzilla over there. But she will come up to the table and stand up on her hind legs to peer over the edge at it.

Oh that is just too cute!

My dad was a model railroader. If I remember, the scale was... H? I think a size up from Earl's?

Heidi... you could consider letting Earl build a small track/tressle all along the walls you know. The building the model railroaders used was closed for remodeling for like a year, so they moved into our basement. Fortunately I was young enough to really enjoy those Friday nights. They cut through the walls, built a huge switch yard (I LOVED soldering the switches!) - and we gave them a custom-made gold spike for the last one when they were ready to have the rails that went around the circumference of the house meet. Wish I had pictures of all of it - we had heaps of fun building in the scenery and such.

...but if you cut the holes big enough, the kitties would love it too.

Haha, nice
I know my husband has a model train & tracks somewhere in storage at his mom's house, might have to get him to bring it out and set it up for the felines!

wonderful pics and such a pretty cat!

Laurie that must have been so fun! HO Scale (That's the most popular scale and has been for decades) is BIG compared to N. The N Scale trains are maybe 1" tall x 2-1/2" long? Just perfect kitty toy size!

I've already promised him a full room or part of the basement whenever we get our next house. Then he'll get all fancy with tunnels and stuff. Right now I don't even want to think what he would do to the whole house if I gave him the green light to bust through walls!

This is where it's at now...Obviously I didn't get the pix & vid up in a timely fashion.



And a closeup of his trains...


He is getting a full Chessie System (click link for the mascot info) line for me, though. OK, for him too - he was a cat lover when he actually saw these trains when he was a kid. Funny enough...the actual Chessie System stopped running in the '80s, but the model trains are still in mass production because there is such a huge demand for them.

I'm surprised that some of the pieces aren't already under the couch!

Originally Posted by captiva

I'm surprised that some of the pieces aren't already under the couch!

Click to expand...

I was thinking the same thing.