Whatever Happened to Kids Playing with Model Trains?

Do kids still play with model trains?

I loved my set from back in the 1950s.  My brothers and I (and my father) spent countless hours building our set, tearing it down and re-figuring it, adding trees and houses and people to the landscape and buying more and more railroad cars to make our trains longer and longer.

Every year the Sidney Recreation Center would hold the biggest model train show in the area.  I never missed it!  The whole two story building was given over to train hobbyists and it was a magical wonderland of activity for kids from the whole area.  It was, and remains, the best model railroad show I have ever been to.

Have you ever been to the Medina (NY) Railroad Museum?  It is just outside of Rochester and it is awesome.  I wrote about it in my most recent book The Unknown Museums of Upstate New York.  Of the fifty museums I researched for the book, this one was the one that really touched "the kid" in me.  You should check it out!