to the NYC museum in Elkhart… he was interviewed on a local TV station news, the interview was your average interview, no links… but…
heres what got me, the after conversation in the studio about it as they wind down the piece, the weatherman says he was pretty fadcinated by it but the main newscaster said he broke all his trains…ha ha.
which made me think about the conversation here we had about the model industry making the “cheap” trains wear down and stop working, by the time its worn down the family may buy another train set.
Here was the proof about the broken trains and why the industry took the direction.
Toys yer gonna break.
Glad to see that the museum will get the benefit of that gentleman’s generosity.
The comments may say more about the childhood personality of the ‘main news anchor’ than he might have wanted to admit - as well as his present attude regarding serious modeling. In my family, my twin granddaughters cared for their childhood toys (Barbies and fire trucks, respectively) as if they were intended to last a lifetime (and the fire truck collector’s sons are now playing with mom’s toys.) OTOH, their much younger brother’s toys have half-lives measured in hours. Guess which one is NOT welcome in my layout room!
Aside: why would a girl play with fire trucks? Well, her mother (my daughter) is a firefighter-paramedic…
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
I have to agree with Chuck that it says more about the person’s personality when they were a child which is a clear picture of whom they are today. I don’t care if you gave a young kid a $4500 brass locomotive in the hands of the right or should i say wrong kid it would become a mass of junk with in minutes maybe hours if your lucky. Remember the kid we all knew when we were young so many years a go who blew up their models with fire crackers and such well I wasn’t one of those kids. I by far wasn’t the best model maker of my day but to me they were mine to admire and appreciate. I still have some of those glue laden master pieces sitting in my office a fond reminder of the good old days. I see the same thing in my own son but only with certain toys. He has special needs so it’s understandable but not an excuse why he isn’t the most graceful of all kids to quote my late mother “he’s like a little bull in a China shop” destroying pretty much everything in his path with the exception of toys he really loves. He plays with them and then puts them back up on their shelf or in their box. You would have thought the world was coming to an end when one of the wheels fell of his die-cast Mark Martin cars. I had to do what daddy’s do right then and there and repair it.
So yes some of the stuff today as well as some of the stuff from days gone by is and was pure junk but thats they way it always will be weather your talking trains or model planes or what have you. Thats why we or shall I say I have learned you buy big, well made tough kid friendly toys and save the nicely detailed good stuff that you would like to play with yourself until they are older and more responsible. By that time they have little or no interest in them and you can have them all to yourself.