For the holidays: the joy of model trains

Remembering when toys did not contain silicon chips

The holidays cause many to experience nostalgia for childhood – when all is in the distance, the disappointments and betrayals not yet begun; when adults provide for needs; when glistening presents or chocolate dreidels or Eidiyah money are in the offing.

With each passing year a person’s supply of future holiday seasons diminishes. This may increase nostalgia.

In decades to come will aging Gen Zs feel Christmas nostalgia for getting a PlayStation? It’s the moment of childlike happiness that matters more than the gift. As that Jesus guy noted, to be childish is bad, to be childlike is good.

I’m glad there were no video games when I was young. I would have wasted endless hours, never read the classics -- or built train sets.

For me the essence of holiday reminiscence involves toy trains.

Bart’s All Aboard of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Back in the heyday of train sets, most popular were Lionel (“O gauge” and still manufactured, current bestseller is a Barbie-themed train that is battery powered so no wiring required) and American Flyer (“S gauge,” the brand now owned by Lionel -- which itself has changed ownership several times -- and made in limited quantities).

O gauge and S gauge were big enough they were relatively easy to set up. The smaller HO gauge eventually took over the toy-train market, because less space is required.

Expensive, tiny N gauge came into existence for grownups who wanted a train set that could fit in an office, and were not price-sensitive. N gauge is hard to work with but enchanting. I have a Kato-brand N gauge collection that includes Evergreen Line shipping-container well cars (for a supply chain Christmas!) and a remarkably authentic five-inch model of the General Electric Evolution low-emission locomotive. When you put the engine into reverse, a backup searchlight comes on!

In 2006, I drove an Evolution at GE’s then-proving grounds in Erie, Pennsylvania, while researching my 2009 book Sonic Boom. It’s quite something to go from N gauge to real locomotive. “This is a closed track, no one has ever crashed,” the instructor said. “Don’t be the first.”

Sonic Boom contains a chapter on the design and manufacture of the Evolution locomotive series, once built in Pennsylvania, a state essential to rail history – more in a moment – now built in Texas. The Evolution is a U.S.- manufactured heavy industrial product that sells briskly in China: the sort of information that cannot cross the shouting barriers of the MSM.