Kids unattended at train shows

C W, no receipt = no tax man.  How many times have you paid tax on purchases.

 

Jack

 

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C W, no receipt = no tax man.  How many times have you paid tax on purchases.

 

Taxes are included in the ticketed price, aren't they?

At the TCA Eastern Division train show (York), the PA tax department does not require taxes to be collected in the member halls. Those in the dealer halls should be collecting taxes.

 

most kids will, and are, well behaved. Set up shop at a Train Show in Fulton New York about 4 years ago. I have a Standard Gauge set that I run on the floor. It runs threw two tunnels going under the board and out the other side. The kids love it. Anyway, I usually wait to set that set up on Saturday morning when the show opens because the kids like to watch me set up the track. Had four boys ranging in age from 10-12 on the floor, on their bellys watching. Their Mom came by and said "time to go". They let out

a scream and said "he's almost done". Mom backed off and let them stay until I got trains running on the floor. Smoke, whistle, choo choo. How much fun is that.

I have seen Popi's display, I think its great. The promoters where he sets up are lucky to have him.

Yes, 5% of the people cause 95% of the problems.

 

Dealing with the 5% "politely and firmly" has proven time and again to NOT work. The stuff still gets broken and stolen. It's completely reactive, and only deals with the problem AFTER it has happened.

 

Ruining it for the 95% might get them to wake up and take notice of the 5% of troublemakers. Maybe enough pressure from society will curb things for a while. If they know all eyes are looking and they're guaranteed to bet busted and shunned, it might take the fun out of being destructive.

This subject comes up about once a year. I'm usually amused at the opinions of those who have never had their trains and hand-built scenics on display...and I don't mean inviting a group to your home or club...I mean 8,000 at a Greenberg show, or 40,000 at a World's Greatest Hobby show. I've been there, at least a dozen times.

Thanks C.W. I appreciate that. We try hard. Carrying on the tradition of my father-in-law, Donald S. Walker. He went to be with Jesus July 2013. We miss him.

When I originally posted my reply, the premise was that we, as train collectors and operators, need to do something to introduce kids and younger adults to the world of model railroading instead of complaining about a kid who broke something. If you do not want it broken, do not display it where a kid can get his or her hands on it. You cannot rely on the kid to know better or on the parents to correct the child.

Nowhere in model railroading world have I found anything about teaching parenting skills in order to run a model train. I have a whole neighborhood of kids that are being raised by helicopter parents who are more worried about their child's self esteem and not personal responsibility.

But the problem remains that if we want this hobby to continue, we, as older members, need to do SOMETHING to bring younger people into the hobby.

I've noticed a recurring suggestion that people shouldn't bring their expensive high-end trains to run on public layouts.  I think that's being short-sighted for a number of reasons.

 

What if high-end products are all the member has in his collection?  And even then, some of those people may not even have personal layouts, and short of the occasional carpet central, club layouts are their only alternative, and some of those club layouts also happen to be open to the public.  Do you propose that people in that category be told to just leave them at home and not come?  Tell them to buy inexpensive trains even if he or she may not want them just to appease a no-holds barred type of operating environment that most of the public won't take issue with if it wasn't that way anyway?

 

You can have an up-close, interactive type of layout for the public and still have measures in place to provide a reasonable means of protection for members' equipment.  The SD3R club does exactly that as I mentioned earlier in this thread, it works exceptionally well; and the public keeps coming back for more.  In that context, saying that putting up a sheet of plexiglass around the layout perimeter is the equivalent to the Berlin Wall is, frankly, an uninformed and presumptuous statement.  It's the members and how they interact with the public that makes the difference.

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But the problem remains that if we want this hobby to continue, we, as older members, need to do SOMETHING to bring younger people into the hobby.

 

As long as I am alive and able, the hobby will continue.

While I am always willing to help a newbe out (including families with children), I have no concern about the future of the hobby.

Let's face it. (Perhaps we already have.) The generation(s) born immediately before, during ("War Babies," like me: 1944), and right after WWll ("Baby Boomers," like my wife: 1947) collectively, are the largest population alive on this planet, and we will probably not see its like again.

 

Those people, esp. the males, were influenced to be interested in trains, real and/or toy, by life around them. That life included trains just about everywhere, whether they were moving troops, livestock, meat, lumber, steel, food, newly invented appliances, vehicles, or the heavy-equipment needed to build new suburbs and a highway system for all the new cars and families to "See America First" in. Whole industries, like steel (my entire family worked in the mills in and around Pittsburgh,) shifted to a post-war economy that built cars and appliances instead of tanks and rifles, and most all of the shipping of raw and production materials were carried to their destinations via trains, and of course, the burgeoning trucking industry.

 

For example, in the town where I was born, McKeesport, PA, the local steel mill, National Tube, needed its trains to get into the mill from several directions. One access  cut diagonally right across the main shopping street in town. No problem. Traffic - pedestrian and vehicular - would just halt its progress and stand still until the trains passed into the mill; sometimes, a mill-bound train stopped mid-route and "parked" diagonally across that main thoroughfare and kept folks waiting for considerable amounts of time. No problem. Why? THE MILL needed its TRAIN to have access. I, as a toddler and later as a boy, used to reach my little hand out from the sidewalk and touch the slow moving steam locomotive any time I wanted to. The mills ruled - dominated; provided; financed - life, and the trains were integral to it all, moving everything along, moving life along.

 

I'm not making these things up. I lived it. And when I saw Lionel trains in "Stone's Hardware Store" in downtown Duquesne, PA, for example, or drifted into my preview of Heaven by watching my father run his trains in our home, or went to the homes of the really lucky boys in Duquesne Place who actually had their own trains to run, I respected them and their families tremendously because (in addition to a million natural reason to respect them) they could afford to have Lionel or American Flyer or HO trains to play with anytime they wanted.

 

Having toy trains mirrored real life in the children of post-war America. Trains were everywhere, and the toys representing them needed to be everywhere, too. And they were.

 

WE will not see that phenomenon again, no matter how hard we try or may yearn to, no matter how welcoming, cajoling, generous, non-barrier layout building, gifting, here-take-the-remote, or Polar Expressing we may want be, we will not see those numbers of us again. No matter what we do. You could give train sets out to every living kid who walks by you on the street, and you would not get a mirror-image of our interest in trains repeated in American society (and I suspect, worldwide.)

 

Look at this forum (and any other.) This place is part of the electroinc-www-communication new-age. Note the number of children you see aboard.

 

Period.

 

My humble opinion.

FrankM.

 

So, let's enjoy them - the kids and the trains - while we have them. The future will take care of itself, with interests held by the young people that are no clearer to us than the 1890's generations that rode in horse-drawn buggies could see the toy cars & trucks about to be sold in stores like "Murphy's 5&10" in the their rapidly approaching future.

I'm primarily a scale runner. However, I always look for Popi's display at Syracuse! I like all the trains in motion and watching others enjoying it. I believe I've seen him at the Buffalo Central Terminal show which I hear will be starting again next year.

Jim

sorry to disappoint, Ive never been to Buffalo terminal. I do the show @ Clayton Arena

in Clayton New York that same weekend. We lost some dealers to the Buffalo show because it was the same weekend as ours, but they came back saying they like our show best. We have a nice location in the Thousand Islands in Northern New York State

on the Canadian Border. Every year same time. weekend after labor day.