Toy Model Trains
Toy Model Trains
Hey, remember when we were kids and you saw your first toy model trains. What was it that grabbed our imagination? Maybe it was the uncanny way all the world was just shrunk down for us—like we were Gulliver looking down on the Lilliputians or something. Whatever it was, it just really got me somewhere deep and I can still remember how I imagined myself in that world, a little tiny figure about to board the train. Did you imagine that too? You would get on the toy model trains in that little world and ride them around and around going by diminutive workmen and over little bridges and through dark tunnels? You’d go all the way around and then want to do it all over again? There was just a wonderful pleasure in the repetition of the track—like being told our favorite story over and over, huh?
Santa Fe Diesel Locomotive
Well now that we’re grown up, there are still lots of reasons to get back into toy model trains. Here’s a few of the main ones:
- Toy model trains are a great family friendly activity: These days you can’t feel comfortable leaving kids in front of the TV or the computer—you just never know what kind of thing they’ll get exposed to there. Toy model trains, though, are a great way to spend good quality time with the younger members of the family. Yeah, I know, they’ll say they don’t want to at first and make you feel like you’re a weirdo for wanting to spend time doing something with them, but once you get by this initial hurdle you’d be surprised how even the most savvy, jaded kid will come around and really get into it. Because, as we both know, there’s a lot more to toy model trains than someone might guess at first.
- Toy model trains help develop the imagination: There are few activities that you can do as a family that help develop the imagination more than toy model trains. Toy model trains are just a full brain activity. What do I mean by a “full brain activity”? Well I mean you have to use both hemispheres of your brain to do toy model trains. You have to use that logical/mathematical part of your brain to plan the track, choose the materials, measure the distances, decide on what types of paints and glues to use for specific jobs. Yeah, you need to develop all of the same thinking skills an architect or an engineer would. But you also need that sort of intuitive/artistic part of you brain too. You need to paint and weather the trains, construct little houses, color the little workmen’s clothes, decide on how to space little cows and barns to get the most aesthetic pleasure from your little landscape. Yeah that’s right, as if you were a little Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo.
Napa Train Station
- Toy model trains are relaxing: But you know, it’s not just about those little shorties running around the house and making messes in the kitchen. Toy model trains can be relaxing for us grown-ups too. Work can really be stressful—I don’t have to tell you that—and if you’re like me, yoga only makes you even more stressed out. What you really need is to do something with your hands and feel at the end of it all that you have something to show for it. Nothing is better at the end of a stressful day than to sit down at your toy model trains and detail a model locomotive. All the little brush strokes that are involved in weathering one of those little guys really has a way of brushing away all those worries you dragged home with you.
- Toy model trains are educational: Don’t tell your little school age friends, but model training is also educational. Not only do you develop mathematical planning skills and artistic precision, but you also learn a lot about history from model training. While you’re planning your toy model train’s landscape you’ll find that you end up learning a lot about the Industrial Revolution or Manifest Destiny without even realizing it. You’d be surprised how such information can help to inform you about the modern world. Since the invention of rail travel in the 19th century is so connected with the development of our world today you just can’t help but pick up interesting and sometimes useful information about history and politics without even noticing it.
- Toy model trains are just fun: Yeah, yeah, educational, imagination building, relaxing, blah, blah! You’re right; the truth is that the main reason to model train has nothing to do with these other reasons. The main reason is that model training is just fun. There is something about building a whole miniature world that really appeals to that best part of us, the part maybe that helps build society itself, and the part that just loves the whole long term planning and meticulous eye for detail that goes into toy model trains. It’s the part that loves to create the illusion that one of our little trains has been through rain storms and has the carefully detailed rust marks to show for it. This is a particular kind of fun that just isn’t available from watching TV or playing a video game. It’s just much more involving than that.
And in the end, there is just that pure, innocent joy that comes from watching a miniature train travel across a track in the bucolic settings of yesteryear.
