Model Railroad Hobbyist | June 2016 | #76 ASSISTANT EDITOR editorial Don Hanley Taking the long term view We can pretty much agree we live in an instant-gratification society. My grandmother was born in 1892 on a small farm near Merom, Indiana along the Wabash River. She saw a lot of changes in her lifetime: from horse and buggy, steam locomotives, and telegraphs; to airplanes, telephones, two World Wars, television, and man landing on the Moon. She died in 1987. She saw a huge change in technology in one lifetime, and technology is still changing. Besides affecting our daily lives, technology changes also are affecting our hobby, from rapid prototyping, to controlling our trains with your smart phone, to dead rail power. Much of the new tech seems aimed at helping us “do more” in the 24 hours allotted to us each day, further fueling our instant gratification society. Yet with all of these technological advancements affecting life and our hobby, model railroading is not an instant-gratification hobby. Most of us dream of having a large layout along with the space and time to work on it, having friends over to enjoy it, and to admire and operate it. But every one of us will run into the reality that to • INDEX • TABLE OF CONTENTS