Take a kid to a train show/event (challenge)

[RobertInOntario]

This topic kinda bugs me.
We used to have a Junior Engineer thing at our train shows, where we would allow kids in a particular height/age range to run trains. It worked out for a long time and brought in a lot of money, but lately other club members decided it needed to go.
I'll be curious to see if we get as many people returning this year, since in the past we'd have "repeat" customers come in weekly to run the trains.

Yes, I think that's a good idea as well -- to have layouts that are child-friendly where kids can have a go at running them. These could (but don't have to be) rough/basic layouts that can take a bit of a beating.

I was at one train show last January where my son (and others) were welcome to operate a switching layout. He enjoyed doing this for several minutes. At the same show, he was also allowed to operate some 0-gauges locos up & down a stretch of track.

Then, at another recent show this fall, a club had their layout and one of their members immediately came over to my son & gave him the DCC controls to him and talked him through a series of switching maneuvers. I thought this was great! and I think we need to do more of this.

I think if we all made a bit of effort to do this, we'd help to attract a whole new generation to our hobby. There are several reasons for doing this:
-- if we believe we have a great hobby, what's wrong with taking a little time to promote it, especially to the younger generation?
-- I think it's good for kids to get away from electronic toys & games and get into something more creative such as MRR, (or meccano, or model-building, etc.)
-- if we "hoard" the hobby away to ourselves, and discourage kids from taking part or make our layouts off-limits, they will naturally not be interested.
-- there are too many things competing for kids' attention these days, so they don't come across model trains as often & easily as in the past. So maybe we have to go out of our way a little to show them our MRR stuff.

Most kids who come over to our house make a beeline to our layout -- it's set up prominently in the basement. This stresses me out a little, but I'm almost always happy to show it to them & let them try it out!