Climbing Aboard the Holiday Train : Merchandising: Nostalgia for Christmases past and innovations such as digital sound have put sales of model railroad gear on a fast track.

One of the most popular forms of transportation this holiday season may well be chugging along underneath the Christmas tree.

Sales of model railroad equipment--from $20 battery-powered sets to $1,000 high-tech locomotives--are speeding ahead like a bullet train as nostalgic baby boomers pick up a toy choo-choo for their kids or, just as likely, for themselves.

“People look back and say, ‘I remember when dad and myself got together and set up the train under the tree,’ ” said Dick Maddox, sales and marketing chief for train maker Bachmann Industries. “They are looking to recapture those moments.”

The model railroad renaissance finds more female enthusiasts, as well as a move toward bigger trains and high technology such as digital sound effects and video cameras mounted on trains.

A model train series is bound for public television stations, and train exhibits have drawn huge crowds. About 300,000 people this month are expected to tour an elaborate layout with 150 model trains at the New York headquarters of Citicorp, which began the holiday event three years ago. In Washington, a toy and model trains exhibit at the National Geographic Society has drawn as many as 3,000 people a day since it opened in October.

“It’s probably one of the most popular exhibits we ever had,” said Sandy Cidey, society spokeswoman. “There are a lot of train fanatics out there.”

Model Railroader magazine surveyed its approximately 200,000 subscribers in 1988 and found that a surprisingly high 25.6% had become model train hobbyists within the past five years. Many of the newcomers--whose average age is 36--are baby boomers who toyed with train sets as children.

“This is the stuff I used to play with when I was a kid,” said Joe Conti, 39, a Hollywood production executive, as he walked through the new Culver City home of Allied Model Trains, ranked as one of the nation’s largest model train shops. “You got to have one. It’s like a yuppie train.”

Serious hobbyists and people who might pick up a train set only at Christmas spent an estimated $360 million on model and toy trains in 1988, according to industry estimates. That’s a tiny portion of the $12 billion in annual toy sales, but it represents a big increase for the long moribund model train business that peaked in the 1950s.

America’s best-known name in model railroading, Lionel Trains, whose orange-and-blue-striped boxes were almost as common as candy canes during the holidays in the 1950s, reports that company sales have tripled in recent years. Sales at the privately held firm now total more than $50 million annually.

Sandra L. Beste, Lionel advertising and promotions manager, says parents feel that setting up and operating a train gives them a better chance to “intermingle and play with the child instead of a video game, where you are doing your own thing and not communicating with each other.”

The resurgence coincides with growing numbers of model railroaders who have come out of their basements and garage workshops to promote the hobby as a respectable, adult pastime. Enthusiasts often complain about being kidded about keeping what many consider a childish pursuit.

“It’s a bigger hobby than most people would like to admit,” said Greg Ramsey, 34, a naval engineer who volunteers his time at the rail museum at Travel Town in Griffith Park. “A lot of people don’t see it as a serious hobby--they consider it something kids do.”

Russell Larson, editor of Model Railroader magazine, said: “That stigma is a thing of the past. They take trains out to a shopping center where people can see them. They are proud of their hobby and want to show it to people.”

Indeed, more of the nation’s 250,000 model railroaders are running their trains through outdoor gardens and around swimming pools. “We had one guy who put his around the hot tub and served drinks in it,” said Judie Keesling, who, along with husband, Alan, owns the Roundhouse, a North Hollywood model railroad shop.

Model shops cater to the whims of detail-crazed model railroaders who want the typical HO-scale model train--about two inches high--to look like the real thing. Customers rent home videos that show how to simulate the effects of weather on box cars and hunt down replicas of air-powered windshield wipers the size of eyelashes.

Many serious modelers build elaborate layouts designed with a specific type of train, time period and place--often their hometowns--in mind.

Charles Wilson of Burbank is into the electric-powered, interurban lines that ran between Midwestern towns of the 1930s. In the past seven years, Wilson has built an 8-by-15-foot layout where 2-inch-high interurban cars travel down a vintage Main Street and then out through rolling countryside.

“I don’t know if it will ever be complete,” said Wilson, 34, an Amtrak sleeping car attendant who has amassed a library of 50 books about his favorite trains. “There is always something to do.”

The recent sales growth has been fueled by new customers such as 34-year-old Dennis M. Pieczonka of Valencia, who has returned to model trains after abandoning them as a young boy. The aerospace executive now devotes a few hours a week to tinker on his fledgling railroad layout, which is taking shape over an 8-by-10-foot platform suspended from a garage ceiling.

“It’s been a lifelong dream for me, and I’m now just able to finance it,” Pieczonka said last month while shopping at the Roundhouse, where he forked over $125 for track and electrical supplies. “I’ve spent $1,000 in the past half-year.”

Women also are climbing aboard, but they are still a minority.

Amanda Reader, a 21-year-old Sherman Oaks resident who likes to build her own train cars, said constructing a layout means working “with plywood and nails and a lot of stuff that are considered men things. My mom hates them, and a lot of women just don’t see what’s so exciting about a train going around the track.”

But women, in particular, are big fans of the relatively large 6-inch-high trains that are currently in the spotlight. Popularized by West German train maker LGB, G-scale trains fetch anywhere from $2O0 for starter sets to $1,200 for a single locomotive that simulates the sounds of steam engines and whistles at various running speeds.

Ron Gibson, customer relations manager at LGB of America, said 1989 sales are 40% ahead of last year’s. The trains can be run outdoors in garden railways and are often used as decorative items, being displayed in homes as well as fast-food restaurants and store windows.

“It’s an eye-catcher,” Gibson said. “The customers sees them and says ‘I can do that.’ ”

For those modelers who don’t have enough time or patience, already-assembled railroad layouts need only a working train to be in business. So-called ready-to-run layouts sell for $2,500 and come complete with tracks winding through Alpine villages, mountains and tunnels.

Many die-hard modelers, a few who even build their own trains, would turn their noses up at something like that, says Allen Drucker, owner of Allied Model Trains in Culver City. “The enjoyment is in the building of it,” he said of railroad layouts, “not the operation of it.”

But there are plenty of well-heeled customers, Drucker says, who “can’t put together two pieces of track. Honest.”

Whatever their skill level, model railroad lovers are taking a trip to Drucker’s new 11,600-square-foot model train emporium, which is patterned after Union Station in downtown Los Angeles.

Children press their noses against the display windows to watch a colorful assortment of trains travel through small-scale towns. Inside, adult men stand mesmerized by the same scenes.

The only person who, perhaps, wasn’t tempted to buy a train was Drucker himself. “I do this all day long,” he said. “I don’t need one.”