Frailey’s column in the June issue confirmed my suspicions. There are indeed younger railfans out there, just not always participating in the hobby (or even the industry) in ways us older guys have been used to seeing. Perhaps part of the reason there was an absense of young blood at the Lexington Group meeting Frailey wrote about in his prior blog is because the event was not widely promoted in advance online. From what I’ve been told and shown about previous Lexington events, it’s a terrific opportunity to be entertained and educated about history and current operations by some knowlegeable insiders. I know several guys in their teens or early 20s who would love to attent such events. But I’m sure there are many more young fans who would prefer something else.
My own son, Sean, 15, is passionately involved in trains on a variety of levels. Photography for sure. And he’s already got his own growing library of rail-related books. A mint-condition copy of “The Impossible Railroad,” chock full of Steinheimer photos of the San Diego & Arizona Eastern, was Sean’s favorite Christmas gift a couple years ago. And he knows his way through a timetable or track charts as good as anybody, and has today’s road numbers and models and spotting features memorized better than me.
Sean’s biggest investment of time and energy seems to be with Microsoft Train Simulator. Anymore, he spends far more time building new routes from scratch or editing/upgrading commercially-available routes and rolling stock than he does simply running the trains. He tells me that of the several thousand registered members at trainsim.com, about a thousand are regular partcipants, and of those, roughly 75% are in the 15 to 30 age bracket. Before you write these guys off as a bunch of young computer game geeks with only a minor interest in trains, check out the screen shots they post of their highly accurate digital creations of rolling stock and lineside structures, or the questions they ask each other about sp
Part of the problem is the increasing barrier between railfans and professional railroaders. Most of us old codgers (I am 79) can recount experiences of being on the front platform on an mu electric or RDC or other self-propelled railcar, cab rides, times actually handling the throttle or controller, etc. This sort of stuff is extremely rare for a youngster today.
If I were running a musuem operaton, trolley, steam, or whatever, I would have on day a year as kid’s day, giving youngsters 12-15, male or female, some cab on on the post experience, all with maximum attention to both on-the -train and lineside safety, all members making it their maximum responsibility to insure the day is both safe and a real pleasure for the kids involved.
Remember Ed’s Christmas message about the handicapped kid and the Trainmaster who had lossed his son?
Doug Riddle in his column in that defunct competitor of TRAINS (forget the tile for the present) recounted how I learned to run a streetcar on The Bronx’s Baily Avenue line at 14 or 15. I was a B&M employee (of sorts) when I got to run a B&M freight much later. So that doesn’t count. But hostling a 4-8-0 at Preatoria Park, South Africa might count, and certainly by time on the controller on a Low-V fan trip on the Pelham line from Hunts Point Avenue to Elders Lane might.
I haven’t been to any of the ****Rail events (ie, Winterrail), so I can’t speak from firsthand experience, but I will note that accounts of these events in recent events hint at digital media still being a bit foreign to them - an indication of the “generation gap.”
While the cameraderie and leisurely pace that accompanies such gatherings is great, many of today’s youth are just as likely to have a virtual event on a social media site, attracting participants from all over the country, indeed, all over the world.
There is recognition of this in the fire service (and numerous other areas), noting that today’s kids are “connected” in ways that are a tad foreign to many of us. Bridging that gap is the challenge.
I read Fred’s column and really don’t know what he means. Maybe things are different here in Canada…but railfans are everywhere. Try picking a good spot around Toronto and chances are good there is already more than one railfan there. Go to Bayview Junction on a warm summer evening…sometimes there’s almost no standing room on the bridge over the CN tracks…too many men, women (some really good looking ones too!!!) and children watching the action below…
“The kids today, oh the kids today!”. There were a lot of them at Train Day in Union Station DC, google-eyed by the model trains and the crowd. The Crowd! Lonnnnng lines to see or board the actual trains. Restroom logistics must have been a problem. The parents will probably get most of them into the hobby but not into the industry, where lugging a coupler knuckle up the length of a train is not preferable to touching computer screens or pads
The educational system or (can I dare say it) class system here is pushing people in conflicting directions.
I can remember in 6th grade, ca. 1955, Reading PA, the visual arts room of St. Cat’s. The nun said the film was going to be about nickel plating . A lot of us knew about that from our dads having worked in the extensive hardware industry in town. The film turned out to be “Fast Freight on the Nickel Plate”, or something like that, aimed at shippers no doubt, and was a treat for us train freaks because to a man we wanted to go railroading.
The real Reading Comp’ny employees would discourage us from going into a “dying” industry as we casually trespassed and talked to those crews
I’d suggest to the rails that they’ should recruit personnel as aggressively as they do now on TV with the Gov and industry.
What do we want, computer knockers and their assaulters? The rich and the desperate?
For a while now, a former Rep****can.
Rick
Oh yes, I’m one of those kids…I’m content to observe without interacting, for the most part. Of course, being in Canada which is still a relaxed environment in which to live (At least in comparison to the United [in fear] States) I’ve had a share of cabrides and have had the chance to operate a 50 car train…that was a fun one. First time behind the throttle and I pick up and set out tank cars. One train a day branch, of course…and in pretty much every other encounter, I was told to stay the hell away from railway careers - advice which I’ve abided by so far!