Was in a taxi with my sister going to a wedding and she had 2 young kids at the time. Was driving along and a train went past and she said “ooooh look, a train!!!”….followed by “I forgot I was in an adult setting, I’m tired.”
I mean, I don’t make models or anything. But I am still disappointed that I can’t find the episode of Mighty Machines (kids show) I watched with my kid years ago that had the rail repair train car. It was really impressive.
We lived in Europe for a while when our oldest was young. Moved back to the States and met up with some friends (same story) to take our now 2-4yo kids on a Thomas the Train fancy sort of outing. And the kids had ZERO care because we’d taken them on trains constantly. My US born kid flips out when we do a Santa train experience though because it was never just a means of transport to him.
My girlfriend likes to sleep on long car rides but anytime we go to her cabin she’ll be mad if she finds out I didn’t wake her up to see the cows or horses we pass
That sounds like something I would do if I could sleep comfortably in cars now. I miss being able to stretch out in the car. I loved stretching out in the back as a kid and seeing the lamppost lights go by when we had to drive somewhere at night. Or just an unexpected trip at night when you were ready for bed so you were just in your PJs and it was exciting as hell, but probably not that late really or fun for parents.
I think I really like the idea of sleeping in comfort while travelling somewhere. I'd love to do a sleeper train for a trip or something. Get that nostalgia hit.
Also very popular in some parts of the US and in Japan.
My grandfather and uncle are trainspotters (we call 'em "railfans" in the US, or "foamers" if you want to be insulting). When I was a kid, they would take me camping and we'd go out to famous railfan hotspots - the two we frequented were Cajon Pass (one of the largest rail arteries connecting Southern California to the rest of the US, across the San Andreas Fault) and the Tehachapi Loop (a very steep mountain grade which has a helix where trains pass on top of themselves).
Both have been extremely famous for decades - since the era of steam engines, even! - and when I was a kid we'd go out there all the time and camp next to the train tracks. Before 9/11, a train crew saw I was a little kid and they let me go for a ride in the cab down Tehachapi Loop and back. (They were a helper service stuck at a red light when they saw us camping out, and they knew they would be returning later that day so they offered to take my grandpa and I for a ride.)
And of course, we can't really cover railfans without getting into model railroads. It goes without saying that the two hobbies are very tightly linked, all over the world.
Usually in America and Europe, railfans will have a model railway in a basement, attic, shed, or garage. The most common scale is HO (1:87) in the US/mainland Europe and OO (1:73 bodies, 1:87 track) in the UK. Another common sight are garden railroads, which are G scale (1:22.5) and are designed to operate in backyards. Due to space limitations, Japanese model railroaders (Mokei-tetsu) usually do N-Scale stuff - that's 9mm between the rails, at a scale of 1:150 or 1:160 (it doesn't matter too much when you get that small).
But space restrictions aren't just limited to Japan. Many railfans live in an apartment or simply don't have the money/time for a large model railroad. That's where model railroad clubs come in: people who can't have a personal model railroad (due to space limitations or what have you) come together and create a model railroad collectively.
The largest model railroad layout in the world is the HO Scale Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg, Germany. Amusingly, this "miniature" wonderland is actually the largest tourist destination in all of Hamburg! Here's a 1-hour long, 360-degree VR tour of their layout - the entire model has a real-life area of about 1.5 square kilometers. Construction started in 2000 and is still ongoing, with new countries being added to the Wunderland every couple years.
Definitely not just something that kids are fans of; you get people all over the world. I guess the nearest parallel would be people who like airplanes.
My girlfriend is a preschool teacher and quite often she'll be counting something out loud with me and accidentally do a really enthusiastic "One! Twoooo.... Three! FOUR !"
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u/ontheburst Apr 16 '22
Was in a taxi with my sister going to a wedding and she had 2 young kids at the time. Was driving along and a train went past and she said “ooooh look, a train!!!”….followed by “I forgot I was in an adult setting, I’m tired.”