My main hobby is model railways. When I was a child, both father and brother were heavily into model railways so I'd join in with them. By the time I "discovered" boys and got a job, I completely lost interest. It was 20 years later when we had our son that buying toy trains for him and then moving on to proper model trains re-igniting my interest and I was probably more into them than our son! I've now got a pretty substantial layout, son has long since lost interest over the past 20 years! Whilst I do enjoy running the trains, doing the electrics, track laying, etc., my real interest is in modelling, making buildings etc., doing scenery, i.e. the painting, landscaping using coloured powders, etc., making diaramas from bits of old kits and general bits and pieces, i.e. the creative side of it. Layout is now full of tracks, stations, buildings, hills, fields, etc., so I've gone as far as I can with it. I'm now turning my attention to actually making kits of wagons, carriages at the moment, building up skills in the construction and painting, weathering, etc. And once I'm competent with that, I'm going to start building locomotives which is ultra difficult as you have to piece together the "moving" bits, like the connecting rods for the wheels, the valve gear, cogs etc all of which is tiny and fiddly, so it may be a step too far, but I'll give it a go!
I'm also dithering about getting a 3d printer to design and make buildings, wagons, etc., but I'm not sure I want to spend the time and money learning something completely new. The idea appeals, and I've seen lots of excellent 3d models both on the internet and in person at model railway exhibitions, but I'm not confident enough and don't know anyone well enough who knows enough to help me choose what equipment to buy and to "teach" me the software etc. There's a couple of people at our local model railway club I know who are also dithering, for the same reasons! I think we're all frightened of being the first and wasting our money by buying the wrong things! For the type of equipment and standard of product we're looking at needing, we're looking at several thousand pounds. The cheap ones aren't up to standard and are mostly gimmicky - if one of us could afford one to play/practice with, then we'd do it, but we don't want to waste a couple of thousand to "play" and then have to pay 3 or 4 times that amount to buy what we actually need/want.