Young Folks Make the Best Visitors (Update 8-24-13)

Very nice! Nice to see them interested.

Thanks Chris, we had as much fun as they did.

What a great gesture, it really is fun to see the kids enjoying trains.   You can expect to have a return visit I would imagine.

 

Its actually nice seeing teenagers being praised instead of being trashed. Most of society has a "no good" view on teenagers. It's sad.... 

Brian....I imagine that the teenagers were in awe of the layout...it is simply beautiful!

 

Alan

Great story. You never know, you may have sparked an interest for them to get into the hobby!

They must have had a great time with your beautiful layout.  Nice to see some teenagers interested in the hobby.

A few years back when my son was younger a friend of his came down to see the layout and seemed quite interested. He said he saw something like it on TV but never saw a train layout in person before.

Sometimes I think young people get a bad rap!They can come over and have a great time.You never know the kids you have over.May leave with their own ideas and start geting trains.And start building a layout of their own.So todays visiter could be tomarrow ogauger.

To my experience, there are very few "bad" kids.

Lots of bad parents leaving the kids to get into worse and worse trouble just to get some attention.

Kids need attention as much as they need air. Give it too them in positive ways and they respond in positive ways.

I have never had a kid do anything purposely harmful to my layout.

I have had a few automobiles damaged by kids trying to add or remove drivers and passengers, because they do not fit!

I don't blame the kids for this, they know that cars get people in them.

Especially if they are on the road. So I blame the car makers for those incidents!

 

To Return to topic, I expect you will have return visits from those boys, and perhaps they will catch the bug.

Hi Brian,

 

  Very nice, they look like two very nice boy's.

 

Thanks for sharing.

 

Alex

Thanks John, MUEagle, Alan, Keith, Chris (again), seaboard streak, and Russell for your very positive comments.

 

I agree with Russell, seldom are the kids at fault if something goes wrong. These two teenagers were extremely polite and obviously raised with values. Their parents are to be congratulated. The follow-up is their two immediate families are returning to Maine in two weeks so we will get another chance to have them as guests, this time with two sets of parents. Should be a lot of fun.

Today while taking a cruise around our lake, my neighbor flagged us down and asked if the rest of his family who have been vacationing with them this week could visit our layout today. We were only to happy to grant this request.

 

So the grandparents, parents, and four children came to visit the layout. The parents and three of the kids were not part of the last visit. They and we had a terrific time. I was most impressed by their nine year old who was very polite (the whole family was) and who asked a ton of good questions. He and his mom and dad were a real treat for us.

 

He told his dad straight out what he wanted for Christmas this year, an O-Gauge train. We had to promise the family that they would be welcomed back on the next visit to Maine. The nine year old wants the opportunity to spend more time with us running trains. I probably look forward to this more than him as he is a great kid.