Well if following the hymn sheet of advertising agencies, being worried about how I spent my time and who I mix with, having to have X product, getting in others faces for who they are, and so on is being cool - I don't want to be cool. Unfortunately the word has been hijacked by think tanks, the media and advertising agencies to mould the world the way they want it for their own ends. The sheep don't realise it - much better to be honest about oneself.
I also find the accusation of geek amusing, especially as geeks run the world: The economists, the computer programmers, the engineers, the strategists, the scientists. I'd much rather be a geek than a chav, especially as most chavs have trouble running a bath.
Unfortunately the media do us no favours promoting socially destructive 'interests', and mocking more serious things - Rail enthusiasm being one of them. This country was built by engineers and inventors, not tin plate celebrities and drug dealers.
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Trainspotting in the real sense of taking number officially started in the 1940s when Ian Allen released his books of locomotive numbers. In the 1950s/60 - the height of trainspotting - Railway locomotive variety was at its maximum, with 100s of types of locos, dating from the Victorian age right through to modern diesels and electrics as well as many types of carriages and wagons - all of which made for variety.
Trainspotting, in the age before video games, was cheap entertainment for most (especially younger people) are was literally a craze. By the 1970s the variety of trains was much less and steam had long gone. I would say the mocking of spotters however began in the 1980s by some comedians and was later picked up by the media - simply because some people do not understand the hobby of collecting numbers- I'm one of them! But I wouldn't knock something I don't have an interest in - its ignorant.
In my (limited) experience, most train spotters enjoy collecting things - and its not unknown for many of them to move into collecting bus and plane numbers. In some ways spotters are the most visible part of the hobby and this is one reason why the general public think everyone spots - they don't. Whereas I wouldn't go as as for to say as spotters are not rail enthusiasts, it is frequently forgotten is it is one element of rail enthusiasm, which in my experience annoys many other enthusiasts simply because spotting has been given negative connotations - something the rail press and groups have failed to right. To me, this is the number one reason people are put off, especially younger people.
Spotters probably make up less than 1 in 10 of enthusiasts - as rough guess from 30 years of being in the hobby. Overall, there are around 250,000 serious enthusiasts and 2 million casual rail enthusiasts in the UK. The National rail museum is the most visited museum outside London.
Other common elements of enthusiasm are: Photography, bashing (travelling behind certain locos), modelling, reading and writing books, computer games, the historic side/architecture, the political side (such as joining rail pressure groups like railfuture, campaign for better transport etc), travelling, painting and art, railwayania, visiting museums and preserved railways and working on preserved railways and those with casual interest - who might read the odd book, visit the odd museum. The latter are by far the biggest group.
Most enthusiasts will fit into one or more groups of the above, but some never cross into the others. For example some people love basing, but would never buy a railway book or model, others love modelling, who would never spot. Its a very wide church, although prominently male (unfortunately) covering all social classes, ages, and types of people. I have friends who are enthusiasts who stock shelves in Tescos right up to Cambridge University. There are geeky enthusiasts, famous enthusiasts - such as Pete Waterman, Rod Stewart and many others, and just regular people.
Railway enthusiasts can also have an interest in other forms of transport and vice versa - planes and cars are common, but also cycling and stuff like narrow boats, and buses, there is a very large crossover.
) and you have a season ticket and go to almost everygame people could say thats wasting your life! Its a hobby. I'm sure you have a hobby! People could say thats a waste of tim, bust so you like it!!
But I don't knock those either, we need all sorts of people for a working civilisation.
