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 Toy
Train
My
grandparents were Minnesota snowbirds who head down to Arizona every
winter, staying just outside of Phoenix. Every year my
parents and I would visit them, and one of my best and clearest
memories of those trips was seeing the trains. Toy
trains, actually.
A model railroading club rented out a small storefront a few blocks
away, and they had rooms full of model railroads. Their
prized showcase was a huge HO scale layout, the size of a high school
classroom. The toy trains thundered over trestles, up
mountains, through cities, and around switching yards. Tiny
people went to work, bought gas, and washed their cars. Model
planes flew overhead and the lakes and rivers sparkled and
shone.
Old men who were running those toy trains were happy to show me around,
and soon, I was hooked. That winter I went back home and
started building my own model railroad.
Toy train setups run, from a simple oval of track around the kitchen
table or a Christmas tree to grandiose, room-filling
endeavors. The most common scale of toy trains is HO, sort of
the middleweight scale, with N scale trains being smaller and O scale
trains being larger. Most first timers buy HO scale train
sets, since HO equipment is the cheapest and offers ample
choices. It’s also a good size to work with,
allowing model railroaders to get a good amount of track into a
reasonable sized space, without necessarily making everything so small
it’s difficult to work with.
If you want to set up a semi-permanent toy train setup, it’s
a good idea to start with a 4’x8’ piece of plywood,
either on the floor or elevated on a tabletop, to give yourself a base
on which to mount everything else. Then, before laying any
track, plan out where you want your train tracks to go and what, if
any, landscaping needs to be done. With wire mesh and paper
mache you can make all sorts of mountains, hills, and
valleys. When people get serious about toy trains they often
model their toy railroads after real railroads, replicating actual
cities and landscapes.
Of course, to enjoy toy trains you don’t need to get too
fussy, some people take great enjoyment in setting up the tracks and
moving engines and cars about the tracks. Toy trains offer a
connection to the past and a way to recreate some wonderful aspects of
the outside world in moving miniatures.
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