Historic Model Trains

Young people these days are a lot more involved in updating their face book page than in actually sticking their faces into a book.    If it doesn’t connect to the power grid and add to the monthly electrical bill, lots of boys and girls are just not that into it.  Multi-tasking seems to be the flavor of the day, so long as none of the tasks involve anything remotely important.  Even though they consider history to be what happened last week, it’s still important to find ways to get them involved with it.  It just helps being familiar with the stories of how things came to be.  I don’t mean to get on my high horse, but it’s our duty as patriotic citizens to pass on some sense of our beautiful history to them.  So how can we defuse their resistance to learning about the dead bones of the past? Toy trains can put our children on the track to becoming more culturally and historically literate.  Yes.  That’s right, period specific toy locomotives.  Here’s how to teach our traditions with model trains:

Incorporate history into the model locomotive track plans that you create with your boys and girls:

If you’ve already gotten your kids interested in model locomotives, a great second step is to design a toy train lay out that accurately depicts a specific period and location. Imagine a layout that is set during Reconstruction in the American Southwest.  You can get your young people to learn about this period and then add period details that will really add to the enjoyment and historical accuracy of your modellayout.  Imagine stringing up a long row of telegraph poles next to your track to depict the communications system of the time.  Or they might create a vibrant town near the tracks to symbolize the boom cities that were the winners in the railroad speculation game.  Maybe even put in a representative robber baron surveying his train empire.

Historic model locomotives are also a good alternative to the usual diorama or scale model:  

Diorama and similar craft projects are fine but if you’ve already gotten your youngster into toy locomotives why not take advantage of his or her hobby to really impress at his next school presentation.  A static diorama really can’t compete with the dynamic movement of a historic toy locomotive layout. A picture of Jesse James is fine, but what if you incorporated model trains to bring the locomotive robber’s life details and cultural context to life.  As your period specific locomotive rounds the curve there are Jesse and his whole gang just waiting to attack and continue his wrong headed crusade.  It’s sure to be a success!

Visit Historic locomotive Locales:  

If you’re anywhere in the American West you are never far from historical locomotive sites and museums where model trains are often featured.  This can be a lot of fun and be very educational as well.  Some rolling exhibits may come around as well. Just keep your ears pricked and you are sure to come across one sooner or later.

Whatever you decide to do, you will find that model trains are a door to our traditions even if you don’t explicitly use them as such.  Just being familiar with different types of trains gets us one step closer to understanding their development and the great history that goes with it.  

Here is more information on Model Steam Trains. Here is a website with a free mini-course dedicated to Model Trains.