Kids and trains just seem to go together. Yes, Thomas is part of that, and I read those books to every one of our kids, and watched the videos and bought the toys. The kids also loved other train videos and lots of other train toys:
They also loved trips to train museums, and I was happy to oblige. We saw every train museum or attraction within a 4 hour drive of San Jose, California, with many trips especially to Sacramento. We rode many tourist trains -- from the very authentic to the built-for-tourists, like in Nevada City. We also had "Saturday trips with Dad" every week since early 1996, and once every month or two I'd make that a trip on the Caltrain "double decker train" -- usually to a stop where we could have ice cream and lunch then come back.
For the kids who were really interested (usually mostly my son) I'd make trips to the Santa Clara Depot model railroad and watch any activity in the freight yard. He'd get so excited to see any train go by -- as I used to be at his age.
For toys I focused initially on the wooden Brio/Thomas/copy trains. We still have a very large bin of them in the basement and get them out when we have younger visitors. Interestingly, when I build a layout for the visiting youngsters our oldsters will spend a lot of time playing with it as well. ;)
Later my son's interest in trains was so strong that he asked for, and got, a Bachmann HO set for Christmas. Here he is enjoying that gift at age 4:
He enjoyed it so much that I dug up my old HO trains from my first and second layouts, which I'd somehow hauled around with me for all those years. As i worked with my old HO and his new HO trains I learned that a lot had changed over the years. My old brass rails and couplers were antiques. I visited a train shop to get replacement couplers and parts/oil for the old locos and was amazed that progress in the hobby. I built my son a 4x8 table, as my Dad had for me, and put it in the garage with a dust cover. The layout was easier to set up than my old one had been because of the roadbed track.
I watched as my son made the same discoveries I'd made about trains. The fun, yes, and also the frustrations of a small layout in a dark, dusty environment. We visited the train shop from time to time and began looking longingly at the LGB displays. Eventually my wife bought me a starter set for my birthday and I added a few cars and track, including switches. We put it on the back deck and had fun with it.
A few years later I was given a large gift certificate to the train shop from some co-workers in appreciation of something I'd done, and used it to buy more/better large scale stuff including an LGB Mogul. I still didn't have room for the outdoor layout so we built a temporary one using sections of painted plywood. This worked okay and provided quite a bit of fun. Here's my son playing with it in the back yard:
However, I still dreamed of having the space to build a permanent layout. Alas, while our yard was sizable (9900 s.f.) by local standards, it was 100% full of kid play areas (as the above picture shows).
Eventually in 2002 my son, then 6, began setting up a ladder in the garage and climbing up to look at the Märklin layout that was in storage. He would lift up a corner of the dust cover and sit and gaze longingly at it for hours, literally. After this persisted I called a friend who came over and we took it down and got it going again, moving Daniel's 4x8 HO layout board into the vacated storage spot. Daniel loved it and I had fun with it too. We used it for several months until I decided to start the 4th layout, which I'll cover in my next "design influences" post.
So, what did I learn from all this kid interaction that influenced the design of my current layouts? Two things:
- Remember the COOL factor. Kids like things that are cool, and this is usually what attracted us to the hobby in the first place. But sometimes as adults we forget that.
My son commented that he loved the Marklin layout because of the changing levels, the bridges over tracks, and the switches. He also loved the steam engine best because of the side rods. You know what? That's what I loved as a kid, too. But as an adult I was becoming overly influenced by others in the hobby who insisted on things like fidelity to the prototype and being as realistic as possible. In the process I tended to give up some of the "cool" things, as in: "they didn't have steam anymore in the year I model, so there are no steam engines on my layout" or "I love Famous-Passenger-Train-X, but I can't included it because it never stopped at the city I model". This isn't to say a pure prototype model railway isn't something great to acheive, but there is a balance. Both of the model RRs I'm working on now have plenty of "cool". - Include kids in the experience. When kids experience joy with something that you have created you experience their joy too. I understand some model railroaders don't want kids near their layouts because kids admittedly can create a lot of hassles, and if not supervised can cause a lot of damage. But I am making my layouts very much kid accessible. Now this won't mean a free-for-all. I've shown the N-scale layout to my kids' friends and made sure they understood the "don't touch" rule before they even enter the layout room. At the same time, I also set up the train control system to make it easy for kids to participate. Finally, I made sure the lower level is at a kid friendly height. My own kids aren't all that interested any more in the indoor railroad (they love helping outdoor however, and 3 of them had a blast at last summer's Garden Railway convention), but they still participate, and will probably do more as we move to the scenery phase.
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