Would you like to get a present that will last a lifetime; a gift that will lead to an educational experience that is fun; a present that you could even pass on to your own children one day?! Well, you can. The present is a model train set. For the youngest kids, a train set would have a wooden track with a battery operated engine. A starter set costs about $25.
Once you are a little older, you could get an electric train. Those sets start at about $30, but be forewarned that once the model train seed is planted, you might just have a tendency to bloom from a small circle on the floor to a 4x8 foot layout that takes up a big table top and then eventually to a whole room! Some folks fill up a full garage or even basement with this kind of “work of art”.
Model railroading is a multi-faceted hobby. You can put just a few cars on the track and throttle it up. Then you watch as the train goes around and around. Later, you can learn about timetables, and scheduling train runs. They even make fast clocks to simulate the passage of time.
Soon you will realize you need places for the train to go. Suddenly, you are making model towns with roads and buildings, adding trees and even little people and model cars.
The fun continues as you add more and more details and then you might try weathering your train cars. Weathering means adding brownish paint to the items in your display, to make them look realistic. Real train cars usually have rust and dirt on them, right? So should your display have items that look old and used?
Before you know it, you are doing research! There is a lot of information online as well as in books and in magazines. In fact, there are at least five different model train magazines just coming out of the United States. The pages are full of ideas to make your layout appear more realistic and provide information about new trains.
Now you want to join with other model train fans. You can join a train club! The meetings are online or they might even meet in person to show their work and run their model trains or two. Okay, sometimes the train hobby becomes a bit of an obsession. So be forewarned.
