The Educational Value of Trains

[EIS2]

I have been contemplating giving my grandson a train.  The new trains with the can motors and electronic reversing system are very reliable.   All they require is a little oil and they will run forever. 

The old postwar Lionel's are not as reliable, but they can be repaired easily.  Performing those repairs leads to a good education in electricity and mechanical systems.  I learned a lot from working on trains and that lead to a career in engineering. 

I am leaning towards giving him a postwar steamer to let him experience the rewards and satisfaction of fixing a train.

Earl

[3railguy]

Too bad you can't easily get him a 700K scale hudson screwdriver kit to build.

Postwar diesels are easiest to work on.

Steamers with worm drives come in second (eg: berkshire or turbine)

Spur gear steamers are most difficult and a few can be like chineese jigsaw puzzels.

 

 

[otftch]

I spent my life as an auto mechanic specializing in electrical problems.The basic knowledge was gained by working on my Lionel trains and various layouts. Now I repair Lionel trains.I heartily agree with your statement and wish your Grandson luck with his future hobby.

                                                                                                            Ed

 

[thor]

Earl, I think finding him a suitable postwar steamer is the way to go and I agree with you about the importance of learning how to fix things. However the educational value of trains goes far beyond that, I have often thought of writing a book called "Everything important I ever learned came from playing with trains" because it is absolutely true.

It's okay, I'm not going to do it here and now but our little girl, when she was 2, used to love playing with wooden blocks. My wife bought her one of those retro sets with greek columns, porticoes, all sorts of shapes and sizes, cubes, rectangles, cylinders, cones and I would tell her stories from my childhood and we'd use the blocks to build models of the houses or towns as they came up in the story.

One day I left out a picture of my home town (before it was - ugh - 'modernised') and she got up early so when I came down to the living room there was an amazing model of it AND a pretty good effort at the train station!  "What's that?" she wanted to know - so I told her.  Well then I took her on the subway and the LIRR to check out trains for herself and she wanted some, made us stop at every Brio display or Thomas display.

Last year we bought her a lot of TOMY stuff, similar to Brio but battery powered with plastic tracks and she took to them like a duck to water.  Lots of new games, delivering bricks to be turned into buildings, delivering 'aminals' to be put into the buildings, a really good sending trains back and forth game BUT the important part was how it built on the basic GEOMETRY that she'd first grasped using those wooden blocks.

We've seen her drawing skills, which are good already, advance in leaps and bounds because of this, it became easy to teach her letters by explaining them as various combinations of shapes which she is already familar with.

I won't belabour the point but this assimilation of knowledge at all sorts of levels and making all sorts of connections between different strands of information is immensely valuable and if a child is keen and given encouragement, as I was, you end up being quite encyclopedic in your knowledge base and whats really crucial is that it all relates to a common core of skills which you already associate with pleasure.

So go for it!

 

[RR Redneck]

I think that postwar is the way to go as well. That is how I started in Lionels 8 years ago.

[dwiemer]

I would also go with postwar.  Without all the sound boards, etc.  Something that you can easily fix and demonstrate the essentials of repair work. things like making sure tools go in the right place and that the right tool is used for its purpose.  How tight is tight, too tight is broken, lots of little things that they won't learn in school. 

The most important thing to learn IMO would be how special the time you spend with each other is.  I know how to do a lot of things, and I have been blessed with the characteristic to analyze and figure a lot of things out, in part I believe because of my experiences with the trains.  I look back to my childhood and some of the best memories were of my Dad and I playing and working with the Lionels.

Dennis

[Anonymous]

Trains have wonderful educational value! My son, now 8, love trains of all sizes and eras. Through reading about the history toy and real trains, and playing train simulation games, he's learned a remarkable amount about US and World history, geography, and technology. From the Rainhill Trials of 1829, the growth of railroads in the US and UK, two world wars, the great depression, to the decline of railroads after WWII, he's got a good grasp of history for an 8-year-old.

His tinkering genes are now kicking in - he wants to know TMCC and DCS works. (That'll be a good intro to radio and digital technology.) He wants to take things apart now. We're working on that....

 Old 2037