Boys and girls now-a-days are a lot more interested in updating their face book page than in actually putting their faces into a book.    Sometimes it seems like young people are just not interested in anything that doesn’t have cool graphics attached to it.  Multi-tasking seems to be the order of the day, so long as none of the tasks involve anything remotely important.  Even though they consider the past to be what happened last week, it's still important to find ways to get them involved with it.  It just helps knowing the stories of how things came to be.  I don’t mean to get on my soap box, but it's our duty as patriotic Americans to instill some sense of our beautiful past to them.  So how can we get around their reluctance to learning about the dead bones of the past? There are lots of ways, but one particularly good way is through model trains.  Yes.  Yeah, historic toy locomotives embody a beautiful history with them but don’t burden us with feeling that we are being educated.  Try using model locomotives to teach history this way:

Use locomotives as a secret vehicle for history:

If you’ve already gotten your young people involved in toy locomotives, a great second step is to make a toy locomotive set-up that accurately depicts a specific period and place. Imagine a track design that is set during Reconstruction in the American Southwest.  You can get your kids to research this period and then add period details that will really add to the joy and historical accuracy of your toylayout.  Imagine stringing up a long row of telegraph poles next to your track to indicate the communications system of the time.  A ghost town that failed to capitalize on the railroad because it didn’t get a stop might be depicted tantalizingly close to the track.  Maybe even put in a representative robber baron looking over his locomotive empire.

Historic model locomotives are also a good alternative to the usual diorama or scale model:  

Diorama and similar craft projects are fine but if you’ve already gotten your child into model locomotives why not take advantage of his or her hobby to really impress at his next school presentation.  You will need to lay it out on a portable table and possibly help your youngster bring it in on the day that it is due, but the combination of historic detail and the fascination that such locomotives inspire simply by themselves are likely to really go over well. A picture of Jesse James is fine, but what if you incorporated toy trains to bring the locomotive robber’s life details and cultural context to life.  As your period specific train rounds the curve there are Jesse and his whole gang just waiting to pounce and continue his wrong headed crusade.  It’s your kid though, who will be stealing that A right out of his teacher’s grade book!

Visit Historic locomotive Locales:  

There are also a few toy train museums and other train related historic sites where you can see historic toy trains and some real locomotives as well.  If your local historic locomotive site doesn’t have toy locomotives consider suggesting they find some to the curator or manager of the site.  Some rolling exhibits may come around as well. Just keep your ears pricked and you are sure to come across one sooner or later.

All of these things are sure to place your child on track to greater historical literacy.  Even if you just do toy training without even considering the educational possibilities you will inevitably foster a greater sense of historical knowledge simply by handling these little mechanical doorways to the past.  

Here is more information on Model Steam Trains. Here is a website with a free mini-course dedicated to Model Trains.

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