I have done odd bits of railway modelling on nights and at other quiet times domestic stuff such as repairing clothes or household bits and pieces. I once spent most of a Sunday dismantling and reassembling a cabinet, put it in the car when I went home and dropped it getting it out so that the top was all scratched: girlfriend not amused.
Mostly I read: at first I took The Times in, but when Murdoch took over I switched to The Grauniad. There were also plenty of railway magazines and, for a while, Punch. I also had plenty of railway histories and also books on those areas of general history and geography that interest me, and there were plenty of novels, both low-brow and high-brow. I spent a series of nights reading James Joyce’s Ulysses, something that was a bit much for light reading at home, but fitted well if you were stuck in one place for several hours.
We only had one train in the middle of the night and, although most signalmen tended to get their head down early on, I didn’t until after it had passed as once I am woken it is difficult to get back to sleep. We shouldn’t have slept, but just about everyone had acquired the knack of waking at the slightest railway sound: stories of signalmen being half-way out of the chair before the bell rings or their eyes are open are true.