Model Railroading. It sounds like a hobby for old people these days, and I did get into the hobby because of my dad, but it is a hobby that pairs well with more modern maker hobbies like electronics, programming, 3D printing, and more. My dad was into model train stuff before I was born and he built a layout and had a collection of trains. When I was little I had some train stuff and around middle school my dad and I built a new layout after going to a train show and seeing some new digital control stuff. I already knew I enjoyed electronics and electricity projects, but making the model railroad layout we made some custom circuit boards and did a lot of wiring which I enjoyed.

Fast forward 20 years and the layout basically sat unused in my parents’ basement for most of those years, but my dad is retired now and was looking for projects. I had moved on to learn programming and go into computer engineering. I got into 3D printing, Raspberry Pi, Arduino, etc. My dad wants to do some improvements on the layout so I help him get into Arduino programming. Now, over the past two years or so, we’ve made all sorts of fun “smart” upgrades to our layout including an Arduino powered turntable with stepper motor, Arduino powered controllers for all the turnouts (switches), Arduino powered controller for lighting, getting it all talking together using a program called JMRI running on a Raspberry Pi, and best of all a Raspberry Pi Zero powered train car with a camera for viewing the layout in first person. Adding all this cool tech to an old hobby has been a ton of fun, and I’ve learned a lot of new stuff as well. I’ve been doing a lot of 3D modeling in Blender for the camera car project and hadn’t really done much 3D modeling in the past.