Tom Stephenson
All Things Train – Bridging the Gap Between Toy and Hobby
Training for Christmas Poster
This is a free event on Saturday, November 14th from 3 pm to 7 pm at Inglewood Presbyterian Church, 7718 NE 141st Street, Kirkland, WA, 98034 (near St. Edwards Park & Bastyr University). It is of special interest for children age 1 to 11 (or 111). There will be boxes of wooden track for layout building, Lego trains and track, railroad games, and train puzzles. This is an event to introduce model railroading to a new generation in an engaging way.
All railway layouts are hands-on and interactive and include:
- wTrak Modular Wooden Railway (seen at the National Train Show in Portland and other regional shows)
- Lego Railway
- Rokenbok Monorail
- Geotrax
- K-Nex
- Brio Mec
- UrbanTrak Wooden Tile Railway (prototype)
- WoodTown and Clickity-Clack track for custom layouts
For more info contact me at tom@wTrak.org or 425-314-1561.
Editors note: Tom is the creative and engineering force behind wTrak, a wooden track modular standard. He is related to George Stephenson, the “Father of Railways”. He lives in Kenmore, WA, and is passionate about promoting wTrak and introducing model railroading to a new generation. He is more than willing to volunteer time and materials towards wooden railway modules residing with local clubs to combine at shows and events.
(From Chuck Ricketts, MMR 562)
I just read the article in the Grab Iron about ‘Training for Christmas’. When I lived in Arizona years ago, several friends and I started buying electric trains to donate at Christmas and we called it “Train a Child at Christmas”. When I moved up here, we continued this practice at the Olympia Clinics. Jim Sabol introduced the idea to the Tacoma Clinic and they do it also. Most of us got our start in model railroading by receiving a train at Christmas. I would like to see this idea spread to all of the NMRA clinics. We need to get young people into the hobby and not just be a dying breed.