Two of my grandsons demonstrated their LEGO trains to me (Grandpa MELGAR) this week. They told me that they assembled the trains and track by themselves, and they seem to be having lots of fun with them. These fellows have always enjoyed running trains on my layouts – and they still do. When they were younger, I bought them a Lionchief starter set which they played with for a few years, but they recently told me that the Lionel trains were broken and had been discarded. I was disappointed to think that they didn’t have any trains but I was pleasantly surprised to see their LEGO set-up during my visit this week.
Their new model railroad has two locomotives powered by onboard AA batteries and controlled with remotes. The two-rail track looks to be about the size of O gauge and the locomotives seem to be about the size of S gauge. Their trains are much more modern and up-to-date than their grandpa’s layouts, both of which I run conventionally, although they do like to run my scale-sized trains and realistic layouts. But, no crash-ups are allowed on my layouts.
In my opinion, this set-up is a wake-up call for O gauge manufacturers. Can you imagine assembling your engines, rolling-stock and track from kits, installing some AA batteries and running them remotely with no wiring necessary and multiple trains on the same track? Sounds like fun to me. And, it will keep them in the hobby and pave the way for O gauge trains in the future – which I think would be a good thing.
Grandpa MELGAR
