General Discussion (Model Railroader)

In my real life I'm an EMT that works 24 to 48 hour shifts at a time and when I get home I like to relax and melt the stress off me by working and playing with my model rail ways and trains.

One day I got the idea of what I think may not have been done in a model rail way before.

I was toying with the idea of fabricating a HO scale layout that would take my train (mocked up as a medical train) through the human circulatory system, kind of a journey through the path that blood takes, this would be a great way to teach the grand children about the human body and I think it would interest kids in grade school about the inner workings of the human body as well, to memorize the path that our blood takes all they would need to do is remember the different stations in the lay out in order of where the train would make it stops (ie:) the heart, lungs, brain and so on.

What do you think about using model rail building hobbies as teaching tools?

And has this been done that anyone here knows of?

Just wondering if such a use of HO trains would seem offensive to anyone in the hobby.

I wasn't thinking of doing a gory blood soaked layout but one based more on a medical and technical side of the human body.

Of course the entire layout would have to be hand crafted as I'm pretty sure that there are no HO kits out there for "The human heart tunnel"....LOL!

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Jesse Red Horse, EMT and Model train hobbiest!

Red Horse, that sure is thinking out of the box and is a creative approach, however, that might not be very practical for the educational purposes you propose. My first thoughts on how this would be accomplished - do the children come to the "Circulation" layout or is it mobile where you take it to the children? I would image this would take up quite a bit of space in any scale to get the effect you mentioned, and might even have to be viewed from above to have any real effect. Then again given the space you could have raised stands about 4 feet off the ground surrounding the layout so that the audience can see the layout in full view while the circulation demo is being conducted.

Maybe a mock up or drawing would help to convey your ideas more clearly.

SpaceMouse wrote:

Whew! For a minute there I was having visions of a train enema.

You and me both, Chip!  I had a very bad mental picture involving a tunnel...

Then when you said you were an EMT, I just figured the next logical step was not a layout based on the human circulatory system but rather a "real life story" of an embarassing trip to the hospital.

I had a friend who was an EMT, and he had stories.  People have put a lot worse than an HO train in places we can't talk about here...!

Thanks for making my day, Red Horse.    And Chip, thanks for letting me know I wasn't the only one whose mind went there...!

Mr Vollmer, wasn't that a subplot of the Sienfeld The Fusilli Jerry (aka @$$man) episode, with Frank Costanza & the Fusilli Jerry? "It was a million to one shot, Doc. Million to one..."

Well, I though the usual transporation method though the circulatory system was a submarine-like shuttle (e.g. Fantastic Voyage, Inner Space, the Body Wars ride at Epcot, and so on), but I would stick w/ N scale so you could not only model more of the body, but have several trains at once switching in and out (loop from heart to brain to lungs to heart, concurrently with loop from heart to legs to lungs to heart, etc.). I'd leave it to the user to include the liver (load and unload), the kidneys (just unload - car washer?), bone marrow (new car shops!), lymph (here, I got nothing - I always though it's blood fluids that leak out, nourish cells and re-enter the circulatory system via a round about method.)

Even cooler, if the 'layout' is just going to be viewed from one site, maybe arrange the track so that the side of the train facing the viewer heading away from the lungs is oxygen-rich red, while the side of the train facing the viewer heading toward the lungs is O2-poor, CO2-heavy ...purple?

Could be an intersting idea.  A layout in anything over z scale might be a bit tricky though ( 22 inch radius curves around the big toe ).

Kidding around:  Wonder if WebMD might want to take a look at your layout once done?  I can hear it now "hope aboard for a tour of the abdominal area".

Hummmm, z scale sounds good, I would have to build it and take a video around to the schools of it I guess, I never thought about the space it would take up, I was thinking of having the layout table look like a big cut out like the game "Operation" and have the trains down inside the out line of the human body and each organ that the blood (train) passes through are simply tunnels carved and painted to look like the heart, lungs ect...

It will take MUCH thought!

I could have a red and a blue train to illistrate the return of the blood flow (red Train) and so on.

Okay, all kidding aside...

This project really doesn't sound that practical.  Forget for a moment the size which clearly makes any scale above N impractical save for a giant basement layout...

Are you simply trying to find a way to incorporate your hobby into your work, or is a model train really the best way to illustrate how the circulatory system works?

I would guess the kids would probably be distracted from the main point of your talk by the trains.  Even if the kids aren't interested in real trains, I think the model train would be more memorable for them than the circulatory system it represents.  You have to be careful that your teaching aides help teach the lesson, but don't become the lesson.