In the context of interesting young kids with model railroads, particularly with model railroads in S, I have three grandsons, the oldest being six. Not old, to be sure, but one cannot start too soon. I hope moderators and all will understand when I say the equipment I have acquired so far is an AF C&NW Pacific and a northeastern caboose.
If anyone has some newer stuff but not scale, I might be interested. Such equipment can have flaws as long as it works. I have one or two SHS items I plan to include. I hope to move the kids from the toys to the scale scene, but at the ages of 6 and 4 they are not ready for that yet. This post is about getting kids from the toy to the scale. It would be neat if one of the boys could stick with it and become a scale modeler. He would stick out like a proverbial sore thumb with his X-Box and video game compatriots. Tom Baker ________________________________ From: [email protected] [[email protected]] on behalf of Bob Werre [[email protected]] Sent: Sunday, November 11, 2012 12:34 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: {S-Scale List} Re: Trains (in general) Making A Comeback?!? I'm going to have to agree with Rich on this. The only way to fix anything is to talk about it and hopefully find a way to make things succeed. I will further this assessment of John' observations with the train sets that he saw at big box stores in the past. A former studio-mate was raising a passel of closely spaced kids. They bought a typical low end HO train set as a Christmas gift. My friend mentioned a few weeks into the new year that they tossed the set--it never ran right and most the track wasn't rugged enough to withstand 6-9 yo kids! I also purchased a G scale basic set from Eichmann for around the tree. We ran it only a few minutes for 2-3 years. When I last dug it out, I discovered that the entire worm had worn into almost nothing. I can imagine parents returning sets to these department/discount stores in large numbers. These stores will normally saddle the manufacturers with the liability on those products. Additionally parents would then think twice about buying another set sometime in the future. This is a perhaps a time for the quality producers to raise their heads, seek a market and correct the damage caused by marketing junk. Detroit has had to do similar a couple of times since I've been buying cars. I recently made contact with a somewhat older hometown neighbor kid (who also was the oldest of a 5 boy family). Every year they would get a load of sand delivered into an area next to their house, so we could play in the sand. We built an outdoor railroad (without power) for a few days with his Lionel stuff--just cars and track. S content--original AF track was plenty rugged, AF Pike Master when mounted on those panels was reasonably rugged, AM track is very stout, and SHS track was also very good. I haven't seen the Lionel version, but I see this is a good thing in raising a small crop of serious teen modelers, if we can catch them at some stage. Bob Werre PhotoTraxx On 11/11/12 10:53 AM, richgajnak wrote: --- In [email protected]<mailto:S-Scale%40yahoogroups.com>, [email protected]<mailto:S-Scale-owner%40yahoogroups.com> wrote: > > All; > I am nipping this one in the bud. Let's not speak of our hobby nor scale in a > negative way. > Keep it positive.. > > Thank you > Jeff Sankus Co-moderator > > > > Could it be that our hobby is NOT as doomed as it may appear to some, > > including me from time to time? > > > > > Funny, I didn't read anything negative in John's post, more a sense that model railroading is alive and well inspite of the odds thrown at the hobby by the modern world. John and I don't see eye to eye about various aspects of our hobby and S, but I didn't see anything negative or controversial in his posting about seeing more trains in the stores. However, we cannot just sit on the sidelines and pretend everything is all bunnies and puppies in S or the hobby in general. If we cannot have a reasonable discussion regarding both the good and bad of the various aspects of the hobby, it is my perception that this is not moderation, but blatant censorship. Read this post fast guys, I expect both it and myself will be gone soon. Rich G(ajnak)
