Christmas and Kids....

Let me know where you will be set up. As one who has participated in a number of public modular displays, I'm interested in seeing how you handle 20 kids yelling "Me, me!". Once in a while we've handed the control over to a kid that seems totally fixated (the one who drags his parents back 3 times), but it's mainly to blow the whistle.

 

Old guy who likes to see things in control

Point well taken Joe.  I am "OLD" enough to remember department store layouts myself and without supervision they turned into something less than effective marketing tools for the store or Lionel...  Still, I think there is room for improvement. I can only speak to handling kids at my own Christmas parties and that is short term and intense to say the least.  The same probably applies to hobby store displays, although there you have a more controlled environment.

 

There would have to be some sort of queuing system, and I have seen where buttons put in a child's reach can be managed effectively.  Yes it takes more effort.  Grandpas like me perhaps have more patience with our own grand-kids, but I wouldn't rule it out given the right circumstances.  Perhaps a special session with pre-selected participants would work (hold a raffle like drawing just prior to the interactive event).  

 

That said, I REALLY think Lionel needs to focus on more of the PLAY aspect in their demos and at least show kids under 50 playing with trains.  

Tommy,

    Lionel, MTH and Williams are being realistic, the kids they are aiming their products at are all 50-70 years old now.  It would be real nice if the kids of today showed more interest in the train hobby, however the fact is that our older generation is the one spending the money on the train hobby, there for advertisement monies from the big companies are spent in a non child like manner.   Unfortunately this does not bode well for our hobby, by any means.

PCRR/Dave 

Make yourself $50 next Christmas:  

 

Send me a good hi-res photo of one or more kids interacting with trains--taken this holiday season--and I'll see if I get enough submissions to put together a kids-and-trains-photo album for publication in next December's or January's magazine.  In addition to the payment, you'll receive two comp issue of that Run of the magazine so you and your family will have a momento to share and pass along from generation to generation.

 

Send 'em to editor@ogaugerr.com and put "kids & trains" in the subject line.

At our club, I recently installed a kids' corner - a mini layout just 18" off the ground.  It's located under our regular layout, and is only about 3' x 5'.  It has two train tracks. One is a figure eight with a small train running our Sesame Street character cars.  The other is a Thomas loop around the figure eight.

 

I set up a timer on the Thomas loop.  Thomas sits at the station at the back of the loop.  When a kid presses the big GO button, the train starts, loops twice, then stops back where it started. 

The kids love it, and I've been impressed by the way they take turns.  Sometimes mom or dad says "give someone else a chance", but most of the time, one child shows another how to press the button to make Thomas go.

 

We have a similar button on our modular layout along with other buttons for accessories, as simple as an aquarium car parked on a siding or an oil well pump that goes up and down.  We visit senior residences with the layout, and the old timers love to push the buttons just as much as the kids do! 

 

 

Ed

 

I really like that kids' height layout.....it just might put a remembered spark of interest in railroads, trains, and their models in a few children who will carry it

forward.  Certainly many of us got that spark as small children.

There is a Santa Claus and his name is eddiem.  Made my day!

This is what happens when Uncle Tommy comes to visit.  Clear out the Dining room and setup the carpet layout...  My Niece Katie in the engineer cap and hand on the throttle of the LW. 1958 Super "O"  NW "J" set with No 58 Snowplow clearing the way.  

Matt,

 

Although I used a timer to control Thomas' loops, it's easy to set up on any layout.

 

First, you place an isolated center rail at the station, just long enough for the loco to stop. Then connect a pushbutton to the isolated section and to the rest of the loop's center rail.

 

A push of the button get the loco to move onto the "always on" part of the loop but when it comes around, it stops on the isolated section again... loco set for forward only operation.

 

By using a timer, I can be sure that even a short press will last long enough to get the loco to a live section of the track, and it also keeps someone from holding the button down and running the train continuously.

 

Ed

The only operating dep't store layout I ever saw until recently was on the 6th floor of Gimbels on 32nd - 33rd streets in NYC. I only saw it in action in October 1965. They had one accessory. It was the 262 crossing gate. The train was headed by a 736 Berkshire and ran around a long narrow oval of track. On the end of the oval furthest from the transformer was the crossing gate. The layout was blocked from the public by a foot tall glass and wood frame barrier mounted on the edge of the counter top. The layout operator ran it with a ZW from behind the counter. When he wasn't there the train didn't run and the crowd went away. I made several trips there in 1966 and 1967 and never saw the layout in operation or a crowd in the toy dep't again.

I can't pin down dates or locations specifically from childhood memories, but I saw

in Sears toy department basement on Broadway in Louisville, Ky., Marx and Lionel

layouts running in the late 1940's, early 1950's. Somewhere I saw an American Flyer two rail layout running, possibly in Kaufmann's or Stewart's, Louisville dept. stores, from which site I bought a Flyer whistling billboard.  Sutcliffe's, a Louisville sporting goods store that set up a train department before the holidays, operated running layouts, I seem to remember Marx as well as Lionel.  Those markets, as well as potential customers, are gone. One of my childhood homes had been an old harness shop....they, too, are gone.  Labor, less responsibility of parents for their children,

cost vs. sales, all have eliminated display layouts in other than your LHS.

I certainly miss the display layouts that were around when I was a kid - used to be a spectacular one upstairs in the Oberlin College bookstore that all the kids could operate (the old Long's Books).  An even larger layout existed upstairs at Akron's Quaker Square (Gil Stovacheck's mighty O empire, which still exists today in an old icehouse off of West 25th downtown Cleveland.). Fond memories!

Lionel has put out some great interactive products for over a century, and much of this is for the easy taking on the used market.  It's a lot of work to put something like an interactive layout together, maintain it and supervise the children, and I have the highest respect for the folks who do.

I wanted to share that I think Lionel has REALLY hit it out of the park with the new control systems, and here is the proof: just got back from the shop with the new remote Thomas set this morning.  18 month daughter already runs everything, points and says "eyes" when it goes by, runs down the hallway with the remote to activate the bell, reaches up to tug an imaginary cord to blow the whistle, yells "aaaaaallllllllll" with the conductor and sends the train around the track while she runs a loop around the house.  Wow!  She had some difficulty with the CW80 controller and conventional trains, but this is perfect especially since I can still use the CW80 to limit the remote's top speed.

Things are only going to get better with some accessories (and the tree) over the next few days.  But what a great foundation!

Gentlemen,

   When I was a boy Gimbels, Penny's and Sears along with several others had operating cars on their layouts here in the Pittsbugh, Pa area, and until Jim Sutter retired, his beautiful train shop had several different operating set ups for the kids to see, and he and his wonderful wife would supervise the kids, and they were allowed to run his big train layout.  Peggy's NASA Train with all her operating cars was one of the finest show case operating rolling stock set ups, in Western Pa, My daughter still talks about it even today, and she is 36 years old now.  With the loss of both the Iron Horse Hobby Shop and Jim Train Shop, the Pittsburgh area will never be the same, it truly was a magical Christmas Train time for the Children, here in Western Pa during that era.

PCRR/Dave

 

 

 

Must agree, Letting the kids work the train is important.

eddie's setup is optimal for one time visit kids.

My Christmas layout is a loop w passing siding around a Victorian village.

Every time the kids visit the people all get moved to ride the train and some of the trees ride too.

So my point is: Make it interactive in some way, the kids love it.

My 2 older great nieces can both run the DCS remote with no trouble.

They are 10 and 6 and have been running it for a while now.

I think what Ed did with his Kid corner is a GREAT IDEA. I try and get my grandkids running and loving the hobby. My 10 year old is really into the trains and the 4 year old is just starting with Thomas stuff but they are around them and play with the trains. We have buit one large section of the layout at 36" to allow for a Kid friendly section of the layout.

 

 

 

Here is a photo of my son Eric in early 1984 when he was 2-1/2 years old.

I gave him my Lionel Burlington Great Lakes Ltd. set from 1981, the year he was born, which is in like-new condition to keep and use under his tree this year. He was thrilled! His fiancé was going to buy him one of those plastic G Scale Christmas Trains and he told her "No, I want a Lionel Train!" So, Dad came though and helped out!!

Bob.

I also gave him an oval of FasTrack and a CW80 transformer to get things going. When he comes over for Christmas he may find some more train items!! Hopefully this will get him interested in a new hobby! After all, I have a ton of trains for my four adult children to inherit one day!!

Bob.

I picked up a reproduction Lionel log loader a while back. Didn't hook it up till yesterday. I had some plastic candy canes, that were decorations until the grandkids broke most of them. Upon looking at them the aprox dia was 7/16" so I cut the remains into 5" sections for the log loader. I set it up under the tree in between two loops of track. Well my two grandsons sat in front of that thing for the better part of an hour loading a gondola over and over. They are 4 and 7 and with the exception of the 4 year old being a little bossy, (he lives here) I just left them alone and they played. I didn't have to stop them once. You know the don't do that, be careful, not too rough. I  think for the most part kids can share this kinda stuff. Of course it's not 50 kids at a show. But even that, get em in line and give them a shot. These, the Lionel operating accessories in particular, were and are toys. They were meant to be played with. I hope I got a few good pictures of them, they were having a blast.

As I mentioned earlier the new control systems are great for the younger kids, but some of the old designs are just timeless.  Hey, where did that little guy go?

If you've got space in your home, your finances (not a biggie, believe me!) and most especially, your heart, open up to the idea of fostering or adopting a child or children. My wife and I did a number of years ago and it has kept us young, and brought us joy, love and a lot of concern (you don't just get one side). What's universal is that younger people love action and trains provide so much, especially action accessories. Of our five children, two of them (pretty good odds when you consider it) are as nuts about trains as me! Thanks for starting this thread, and nice to read all the great, thoughtful comments and sharing of nostalgia. If you want to turn nostalgia into modern fun, consider kids as a great investment and love focus (and if you want your spouse to open up the pocketbook a little, include your kids in the action).