There is hope for us yet….
Recently a member of my model railway club brought in a copy of Model Boat magazine to show us an article written by David J Powell OBE in which he postulates that because of the variety of handicraft skills and concentration involved in model making-especially railway modelling-the incidence of dementia is reduced. In 2015 he interviewed over a 1000 modellers from 20 model railway clubs. The average age was 65. He found 4 possible cases of dementia compared with the experts saying he should find 40 in the general population.
Well, with building locos, coaches, wagons, buildings and scenery as well as getting my head around computer programs such as Trax (for signalling) and Templot (for track planning) and now the intricacies of electronics and MERG, not to mention the lathe and the model traction engine I’ve been building for 20+years maybe I might go on a bit longer!
As Bruce Forsyth might have said, “keep modelling “
Nicks workshop mutterings 
The other issue, as well as dementia, is general mental well being. That is a topic I keep meaning to write about. There is also the question of how do we adapt to the changing in our abilities that age or disability inevitably bring.
James
A good point. Spending 2 days standing up operating a layout at an exhibition as well as the driving to and from the venue gets harder as the ravages of time lead to increasing arthritis problems. Answer is to take a stool to sit on and limit the distances to be travelled. Learning to say ‘no’ is a hard lesson!
Nick