Electric Toy Trains

Electric toy trains were a big part of my childhood. My dad was somewhat of a collector, and from my earliest days I remember having model trains to play with. The first ones were those big wooden ones they make for little kids. They were rugged, durable, and completely nonelectric for safety reasons. Soon, however, I got to actually start using his electric toy trains set. I was absolutely delighted with it. He had a little mini city set up , and I could watch all the trains go around and around the tracks. He had a standard locomotive and some coal cars, but he also had a few interesting novelty models. My favorite one was a little gandy dancer. It had two men, one on either side of it, who propelled it by pushing up and down on a lever. When I was a kid, I thought it was the coolest thing in the world.

As you might imagine, when I got to college I forgot about electric toy trains for a while. There were so many other things to do. There were girls to meet, there was music to play, and there are more sophisticated and high-tech hobbies besides. Recently, however, I start to get nostalgic for electric toy trains. I had thought about them a few times over the years, but I had assumed that the hobby was a thing of the past. In this modern world of video games and virtual reality, I couldn't imagine that people still collected electric toy train sets. Imagine my surprise when I went into my local hobby store and found out that my favorite hobby was still around!

If anything, technology has really improved the world of electric toy trains. Things that used to be very complicated to do are now relatively easy. The electronic control panels have gotten better, the models have gotten more detailed, and there are more sophisticated props that you can put in your town. It is easy to wire gate crossings, traffic lights, and other things that used to take a lot of work. Don't get me wrong – it still takes work, but with more sophisticated technology comes more sophisticated and intuitive controls.

The other day, I bought an HO gauge electric toy train set and started to experiment. I still had some terrain sitting around from my dad's old trains, so I quickly started to assemble a miniature circuit. It wasn't much to look at at first, but it was coming together pretty nicely. I added a station, a school building, and a few people waiting for the train as it goes by. It won't ever be one of those sensationally large and impressive electric toy trains you see in movies sometimes, but by the time I'm done I think I'll have a fairly respectable little city.

Summary

Electric toy trains are a part of just about everyone's childhood. These neat collectibles offer a very enjoyable pastime many enjoy today. Technology has improved and the amount of detail for model trains has gotten downright fancy and intricate. You can have an entire miniature city to build and enjoy.

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