Children love trains. There is no doubt about that and there is not a lot doubt that most boys like trains more than most girls, but who understands why? Is it the speed, the power and the bulk of trains that hold the appeal? The days have almost certainly passed when most boys wanted to be a train driver, but there are still a lot of boys who do.
On the other hand, all children like to see toy trains whizzing about a circuit of track and this love of toy trains often remains with adult males, although rarely with adult females.
Many manufacturers have tried to take advantage of children's love of trains. Some produce cheap train sets whilst others produce superb train sets that get to be classics and sell for numerous times their cost.
Apart from the actual train sets, there are also stories about trains and some of these achieve the cross-over into becoming real toys too. The Polar Express and Thomas the Tank Engine are recent examples of this.
The Polar Express is particularly well-liked in America, where numerous homes with young children have electric Polar Express trains running around the base of the family Christmas tree. The Polar Express was first a book and then a very well-liked children's motion picture.
Thomas the Tank Engine is more well-known in the UK and Europe as a whole. Thomas started life as a children's book in 1946 but only became famous after a succession of cartoons were manufactured in 1984 for TV in the UK.
He rapidly became world-famous, but most of the Thomas the Tank Engine children's toys were pulled on a length of string instead of being electrified.
Thomas the Tank Engine has raised billions of dollars in comic strips, books, toys and other spin-offs such as bedclothes, garments, luncheon boxes and wallpaper. There does not appear to be an end in sight to the popularity of Thomas and his friends among the young.
Children older than seven or eight love to connect the track into unusual configurations and regulating the speed and direction of realistic model trains. Different countries had their own train set manufacturers, a few of them going back 120 years. Hornby and then Triang Hornby was one of the first in the UK, Marx and Lionel held a comparable position in the United States and Maerklin in Germany.
These days, original Hornby, Lionel and Maerklin train sets in good condition may sell for numerous thousands of dollars. Marx train sets too, although they always were targetted at the budget end of the American market.
Train sets are one of the traditional presents for children like a rocking horse, a fort or castle and a dolls pram. It would be a terrible shame if these old-fashioned toys died out, because unlike video games, a basic train set may be built upon until it is something really imposing and then passed on to future generations as an heirloom for continued expansion.
About the Author:
Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on a number of topics, but is presently concerned with trains and society. If you would like to know more about train sets for kids, please go over to our website for some great offers.
