Indoctrinating children

[Densha]

When I was in the area, I saw plenty of high school girls taking selfies with Enoden trains and housewives getting enthusiastic about an Enoden train in a certain livery popping up. Not sure where the popularity comes from, but it sure is a nice line. I particularly like the street section and the sea side running.

 

By the way, if you're into monorails, remember to ride/photograph/whatever the Shonan monorail as well!

Edited November 13, 2017 by Densha

[JR 500系]

Yes yes that route is a pair! I would like to call it some sort of a railway-religious route too, since from Kamakura to Hase on the Enoden, you can pray to the giant Buddha, and from Shonan Monorail to Ofuna you can pray to the giant Goddess of Mercy ~

 

 

[railsquid]

2 hours ago, Densha said:

When I was in the area, I saw plenty of high school girls taking selfies with Enoden trains and housewives getting enthusiastic about an Enoden train in a certain livery popping up. Not sure where the popularity comes from, but it sure is a nice line. I particularly like the street section and the sea side running.

 

 

One of the crossings is a popular selfie location as it appears in some anime or manga or something.

 

Must get down there again, I think I was in the area once but it was so long ago I only have vague memories. I'm sure the Squidlet will enjoy it when he's a bit bigger.

[Densha]

Oh by the way, prepare some cash for the Shonan Monorail as they don't accept Suica for some reason. At least they didn't last year.

[marknewton]

20 hours ago, railsquid said:

 

Given that it's left-hand drive (err I mean designed for places which drive on the left side of the road), and looks like a British double-decker despite the Germanic radiator ornament, I'm going to guess Fragrant Harbour.

 

You're right, it's an ex-Kowloon Motor Bus Mercedes 0305. It's one of three Hong Kong buses that were imported a few years back by one of the bus museum's members. He paid scrap prices for them, but getting them here wasn't cheap. I'm glad he did, though, because the thing goes like the clappers, and really attracts attention. Particularly cruising through Chinatown on a Saturday night!  

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

[cteno4]

JRM did a lot of child manipulation this weekend. It was the annual rockville lions club train show. Very fun show as it's the closest in we do, indoor wirh carpets and heat and we get a lunch! All club show, no vendors and loads of kiss. Usually raises like $5k for their overseas kids eyeglasses fund. Lots and lots of kids as the show so very fun. 

 

Thomas brought out his arduino tram controllers he built for kids big and small to play with. It's great with forward on the lever deaccelerates, center is coast and back accelerates. Great for kids as he can set top voltage and also accellerarion/deceleration rates. 

 

We also decided to run without barriers and let kids get their noses right up to the trains. They did great and no issues except a few autos pushed around. It was an adult who almost derailed the shinkansens with his camera strap. Funny I nicely got him back in time and reminded him that camaea strap can grab stuff as well as knock him over and or the camera out of his hand (I've seen a few folks catch a camera strap while moving around trying to take a shot!). 10 min later I saw him almost snag a Lionel steamer in the other room! A few other adults almost had trains run into their cellphones as well getting a little too close. So it wasn't an issue with the little ones disturbing things!

 

cheers

 

jeff

 

Edited November 13, 2017 by cteno4

[ToniBabelony]

Traverser had its maiden run today with the kid. He seems really fond of the 583 Series :)

[cteno4]

The grand nephew was out for thanksgiving so he got his day of trains! Funny he ran in the house stopped at the setup on the floor and was just frozen for a few minutes with mouth open with 4 trains running! He got to put out all the buildings and cars and of course had to do a traffic jam!

 

Jeff

Edited November 23, 2017 by cteno4

[serotta1972]

Cool uncle award goes to Jeff today!  That's awesome!

[JR 500系]

Oh wow... it's simply amazing how children reacts to model railroad, and a good one it is! 

[Pauljag900]

We all know what a wonderful feeling that is when we see their faces and reactions!😀

good on yer jeff👍👍😀😀

[Sean]

Jeff- love that layout and the way he is mesmerized with it!  Also love the fact that the genkan of your house is where you keep your layout

 

My guy has a room full of Plarail now. 

 

My own n-scale layout was put into storage a while back when we moved, with the intention that it will be called forth from the boxes when kiddo is big enough.  I was watching a video of an HO gauge German layout on Netfix the other day with him and he asked me "Can we make one of those sets?"

 

The words every model railroading father treasures.

 

Barely 3 years old (minimum recommended age for Plarail incidentally, though we ignored that) and he is already wanting to move into the more complicated stuff.  The kid is a prodigy (if I may say so).  But the knowledge that starting him too soon will definitely result in a pile of quite expensive broken pieces of plastic trains, buildings and scenery suggests that I should hold off for a few more years. Someday though the room in this picture will have to accomodate all his toys (and those of his younger sister who will be arriving next month) and a roughly 90cm by 200cm layout.  My creative-use-of-limited-space skills will be pushed to the maximum.

 

On that note, what age do you think is the best to get a kid their first N-scale railroad?  My dad got me my first one (a basic German set which we built up over the years) for my 9th birthday, which was about right.  Anyone start their younger (or older)?

Edited November 24, 2017 by Sean

[cteno4]

Ha, you have sharp eyes! The small rectangles acutally are little lids you can pull up to store shoes in! But we are too lazy to use them and just park them by the door usually then you have to remember which cell you parked what shoes in!

 

it was fun for him just set the track and modules up and he did the rest. Actually last year at 4 he did fine rerailing n scale cars and a steamer out. This year I did the rerailing as he was much more excited and had a hard time calming down enough to focus! Overstimulation...

 

might try a loop of n track and a few old cars and engine and see how he does here soon, those age things are not universal at all! I got to Saw on my dad's table saw just about the time I was 5 (under lots of supervision), and im sure I was way under the and up age for that! All depends on what they have been brought up with! I grew up using tools from very young so never an issue.

 

looks like he has a great layout there and lots of joy from it. Fun for you both I'm sure. That is great words to hear! I wanna go play in your son's room, lots of great toys there!

 

i had a little xts set (sort of like a small puzzle plarail with plates and many points and branches) here I picked up cheap and gave that to my grand nephew and was worried it would frustrate him that it had a lot of little switch points where if you set them wrong the train flys off the edge of your World, but after about 10 minutes he had it licked and became a game making it do crazy paths and not screwing up and having it to off the world edge! It will be fun to see how he is doing when we see them all tommorow for the family thanksgiving and a day of playing with it.

 

hoping i can groom him into Japanese trains! Sadly they live in ca so usually only once a year to mould him! He and his cousin has jrm club shirts now! 

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[Das Steinkopf]

7 hours ago, Sean said:

Jeff- love that layout and the way he is mesmerized with it!  Also love the fact that the genkan of your house is where you keep your layout

 

My guy has a room full of Plarail now. 

 

My own n-scale layout was put into storage a while back when we moved, with the intention that it will be called forth from the boxes when kiddo is big enough.  I was watching a video of an HO gauge German layout on Netfix the other day with him and he asked me "Can we make one of those sets?"

 

The words every model railroading father treasures.

 

Barely 3 years old (minimum recommended age for Plarail incidentally, though we ignored that) and he is already wanting to move into the more complicated stuff.  The kid is a prodigy (if I may say so).  But the knowledge that starting him too soon will definitely result in a pile of quite expensive broken pieces of plastic trains, buildings and scenery suggests that I should hold off for a few more years. Someday though the room in this picture will have to accomodate all his toys (and those of his younger sister who will be arriving next month) and a roughly 90cm by 200cm layout.  My creative-use-of-limited-space skills will be pushed to the maximum.

 

On that note, what age do you think is the best to get a kid their first N-scale railroad?  My dad got me my first one (a basic German set which we built up over the years) for my 9th birthday, which was about right.  Anyone start their younger (or older)?

 

 

Plarail is what started my sons love affair with Shinkansens, when we went to Jakarta to visit my wifes family in 2008 I saw the Plarail sets they had there and thought it looked pretty cool, he already had plenty Thomas the Tank Engine stuff and we thought it would be good to get him something different that could be intergrated with the Thomas stuff. I ended up buying him a Railstar set and a 500 Series set, we also got a 3 train box that was of JR Hokaido passenger trains. When we went on our first trip to Japan in 2015 we saw a whole heap of Plarail stuff and were very tempted to add to the collection but at the end of the day he decided that he wanted something more mature and went for a Kato 1012-62 W7 instead.

[railsquid]

8 hours ago, Sean said:

 

Excellent, now I can show this to Mrs Railsquid and say "now that's what a *lot* of Plarail looks like". The Squid household collection fits inside one of those boxes to the left of your guy (we have one of the same design, the box that is I mean).

 

Quote

On that note, what age do you think is the best to get a kid their first N-scale railroad?  My dad got me my first one (a basic German set which we built up over the years) for my 9th birthday, which was about right.  Anyone start their younger (or older)?

 

I got my first proper trainset (HO/OO) when I was about 4, and still have most of the stock. The Squidlet (ca. 2.85 years) is quite adept at pushing some N scale cars along a length of track and is generally very careful about things, so I reckon he might be recipient of a simply-decorated oval of Kato track for Christmas next year, but we'll see how things go.

[marknewton]

Jeff, as Paul said earlier, good on you! Your nephew must have been thrilled to see the layout.

 

On Sunday evening Harry and I wandered over the road to see an excursion train coming back from Moss Vale via the coast. While we were waiting for it we visted with James, our afternoon shift signaller.

 

 

 

I only have video of the excursion train, which I don't think I can post to the forum?

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

 

 

 

 

[marknewton]

Okay,  just learned how to take a screenshot!

 

The leading unit on the excursion train was Clyde-GM 4201, and the trailing unit was Alco 4490.

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

 

Edited November 24, 2017 by marknewton

[tossedman]

Here are some pictures of our train adventures this past summer. Here's Noah's view from the cab crossing the St. Lawrence river in Montréal. Those are some of the locks for the seaway on the left.

 

 

Here he is riding in the caboose at Heritage Park here in Calgary.

 

Here's his view.

 

Conductor training. Learning the lantern signals.

 

Riding in the cab of 1077 at Fort Steele, British Columbia.

 

All he had to do was ask and he gets the best ride of the day.  Below  is his view from the cab.

 

Old meets new. Steam engine and Shinkansen t-shirt.

 

Cheers eh,

 

Todd

Edited November 26, 2017 by tossedman

[tossedman]

And a bit of turntable action at Heritage Park.

 

 

 

Edited November 26, 2017 by tossedman

[Sean]

On 2017/11/23 at 8:48 PM, cteno4 said:

Ha, you have sharp eyes! The small rectangles acutally are little lids you can pull up to store shoes in! But we are too lazy to use them and just park them by the door usually then you have to remember which cell you parked what shoes in!

 

it was fun for him just set the track and modules up and he did the rest. Actually last year at 4 he did fine rerailing n scale cars and a steamer out. This year I did the rerailing as he was much more excited and had a hard time calming down enough to focus! Overstimulation...

 

might try a loop of n track and a few old cars and engine and see how he does here soon, those age things are not universal at all! I got to Saw on my dad's table saw just about the time I was 5 (under lots of supervision), and im sure I was way under the and up age for that! All depends on what they have been brought up with! I grew up using tools from very young so never an issue.

 

looks like he has a great layout there and lots of joy from it. Fun for you both I'm sure. That is great words to hear! I wanna go play in your son's room, lots of great toys there!

 

i had a little xts set (sort of like a small puzzle plarail with plates and many points and branches) here I picked up cheap and gave that to my grand nephew and was worried it would frustrate him that it had a lot of little switch points where if you set them wrong the train flys off the edge of your World, but after about 10 minutes he had it licked and became a game making it do crazy paths and not screwing up and having it to off the world edge! It will be fun to see how he is doing when we see them all tommorow for the family thanksgiving and a day of playing with it.

 

hoping i can groom him into Japanese trains! Sadly they live in ca so usually only once a year to mould him! He and his cousin has jrm club shirts now! 

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

 

Oh cool, that is a great idea for shoe storage!

 

That is great that at 4 your young one was rerailing the cars on his own.  I can imagine the overstimulation setting in!  I might start him earlier than planned on reading the comments here!

On 2017/11/24 at 2:39 AM, Das Steinkopf said:

 

 

Plarail is what started my sons love affair with Shinkansens, when we went to Jakarta to visit my wifes family in 2008 I saw the Plarail sets they had there and thought it looked pretty cool, he already had plenty Thomas the Tank Engine stuff and we thought it would be good to get him something different that could be intergrated with the Thomas stuff. I ended up buying him a Railstar set and a 500 Series set, we also got a 3 train box that was of JR Hokaido passenger trains. When we went on our first trip to Japan in 2015 we saw a whole heap of Plarail stuff and were very tempted to add to the collection but at the end of the day he decided that he wanted something more mature and went for a Kato 1012-62 W7 instead.

The Plarail stuff is great, isn't it?  We have the 500 Series set and a ton of Thomas stuff that my guy loves.

On 2017/11/24 at 4:01 AM, railsquid said:

 

Excellent, now I can show this to Mrs Railsquid and say "now that's what a *lot* of Plarail looks like". The Squid household collection fits inside one of those boxes to the left of your guy (we have one of the same design, the box that is I mean).

 

 

I got my first proper trainset (HO/OO) when I was about 4, and still have most of the stock. The Squidlet (ca. 2.85 years) is quite adept at pushing some N scale cars along a length of track and is generally very careful about things, so I reckon he might be recipient of a simply-decorated oval of Kato track for Christmas next year, but we'll see how things go.

Yes, do show her!  This isn't even half of our stuff, I went overboard shopping on Yahoo Auctions a while ago and bought a few large lots of used tracks, structures, etc, so we probably have enough to cover the floor to a depth of about 20cm with nothing but blue plastic tracks.  Its hard to resist the bargains since the tracks are basically indestructible used are as good as new, its only the trains themselves that I buy new for him as presents.

 

I'm thinking maybe I'll try getting my old layout out of storage and set up for next Christmas when he is 4 (and little sister 1).  The main issue I guess is that I have to present it to him more or less as a fait accompli with the whole thing already set up the first time he sees it, which will be tough to accomplish!

 

 

[cteno4]

Yes I think lots more focus can be had at home over the long haul. Having my grandnephew out one day of year does become wayyyy overstimulation and this lack of focus and just too much motion! The squidlet and tonilet seem to be doing well with the trains all around them all the time!

 

jeff

[railsquid]

2 hours ago, Sean said:

The Plarail stuff is great, isn't it?  We have the 500 Series set and a ton of Thomas stuff that my guy loves.

Yes, do show her!  This isn't even half of our stuff, I went overboard shopping on Yahoo Auctions a while ago and bought a few large lots of used tracks, structures, etc, so we probably have enough to cover the floor to a depth of about 20cm with nothing but blue plastic tracks.  Its hard to resist the bargains since the tracks are basically indestructible used are as good as new, its only the trains themselves that I buy new for him as presents.

 

Yup, the odd bits of 2nd hand track I've aquired are as good as new after a wash in warm soapy water. I reckon in 10,000 years time archaelogists will call this the "Plarail era" due to the layer of blue plastic smothering the country... I've held back from Yahoo Auctions for now, at least until the Squidlet becomes more adept at putting the layout together himself.

[Sean]

21 hours ago, railsquid said:

 

Yup, the odd bits of 2nd hand track I've aquired are as good as new after a wash in warm soapy water. I reckon in 10,000 years time archaelogists will call this the "Plarail era" due to the layer of blue plastic smothering the country... I've held back from Yahoo Auctions for now, at least until the Squidlet becomes more adept at putting the layout together himself.

 

You are wise to hold off on it, once you go down the Yahoo Auctions bulk lots of Plarail path forever it will control your destiny.  By which I mean it will completely overwhelm whatever storage you have.  I think about 80% of sellers on Yahoo Auctions are parents who bought to many Plarail tracks and are desperately trying to offload the excess.

[railsquid]

The Squidlet managed to couple two Plarail cars by himself earlier, I hope he'll get the knack soon as that will relieve me from another tedious duty.

Also he made his own "station" from blocks.

 

Earlier I introduced him to the Chiyoda line (was hoping to see any remaining 6000-series), the Squidlet's verdict (after looking out of the cab windows): "Chiyoda sen, very very dark!").

[Sean]

Yes, my kid started being able to couple them together a few months ago, which relieved me of the need to constantly be doing so myself at his request (demand).  So awesome.

 

He now likes to connect as many of them as he can together into mega-Plarail trains.

 

Did some Christmas shopping yesterday and he'll be getting some more!