For me, it is a mixture - plus its something for me to do around the house after retirement. I had my fill of traveling. Airports, hotels and eating out get old fairly quickly. Now, my train layout shares a room with my wife's quilting things and we can spend time together and relax doing what we enjoy.
Plus, I can do as much or as little each day as I wish. I only wish I could have started earlier.
I also enjoy the various discussion groups. In my professional life I also dealt with several discussion groups. I still follow one of them - they have over 14,000 registered users and 213,000 postings. That group is devoted to helping each other with business related problems.
In some respects, not much different that this group. In another respect, they do not do "hand holding" - where as this group is very encouraging to folks new to the hobby - as well as each other. :thumb:
So, let the good times roll.
steamtrain