They’re back on track

The way Ron Runolfson sees it, the best endorsement for model railroading is the view he soaks up every day through the window of his hobby store in San Clemente. People pause, peer inside, and then track the progress of the Lehigh Valley and McDonald’s freighters on display. In eight years as owner of Ron’s World, a shop that specializes in trains, Runolfson says he has never seen a frown on the face of a window shopper.

“It doesn’t matter what age they are, how they’re dressed,” he says. “It could be a homeless person hauling a cart. They stop, and it brings a smile to their face. It might be the only time they smile that day. I don’t know anything else that does that. Maybe a puppy. But trains are about the only other thing I’ve seen that elicits that kind of response, and I think there’s a lot to be said for something that does that.”

As the holidays near, more and more people appear to be revisiting a hobby that reached its peak in the 1940s and ‘50s but lost steam from the 1960s to the ‘80s. One indicator of the railroad rebound is the crush of customers seeking Lionel’s Polar Express, a toy train inspired by the movie that was based on the popular picture book.

If you’re looking for a Polar Express set, good luck. Most shops don’t have any. Allied Trains, a 12,000-square-foot store in Culver City designed to look like Union Station in Los Angeles, promises to get them in your hands by Christmas, but they’re charging $300 rather than the standard retail price of $249 because they’re having to buy from higher-priced distributors. In the first week of December, the Polar Express waiting list at Allied was 30 deep.

“We’re looking forward to the time when somebody calls us and we can say, ‘Yes, we have them in stock,’ not ‘Put down a deposit and when we get our next shipment, you can pick them up,’ ” says Brian Drucker, the Allied store’s manager.

Neither Drucker nor Runolfson sees a parallel between the chase for Polar Express trains and the Tickle Me Elmo craze of 1996, saying the short supply has more to do with underproduction than hefty demand. But they say interest in trains among kids is on the rise, and they give a good chunk of the credit to a PBS children’s show called “Shining Time Station,” which brought Thomas the Tank Engine and his locomotive pals to the airwaves from England in the early 1990s. Runolfson says he has 9- and 10-year-old customers buying electric trains who had come in with their parents to buy wooden Thomas trains at ages 3 and 4.

Another draw is digital technology. It wasn’t long ago that a kid who wanted to run multiple trains on the same track had to hook up a spaghetti-like pile of wires that looked like “a space shuttle control panel,” Runolfson says. Now, most of the wiring is gone, and the controls aren’t much different from those used in video games. For kids raised on Xboxes, Game Boys and PlayStations, it’s a snap to turn on lights, blow whistles and couple and uncouple cars.

One other major selling point of digital is high-quality audio. Revolutionized by rock musician Neil Young, who is a partial owner of Lionel, today’s trains are often equipped to produce sounds such as coal shoveling, steam, squealing brakes and the conductor’s voice.

“It opens up a lot of possibilities both in terms of connecting with young people who are in tune with electronics and creating more realism,” says Terry Thompson, editor of Model Railroader magazine and co-author of “Legendary Lionel Trains.”

While many indicators point to a renewed interest in model railroading, it’s far from where it was in its boom phase 50 years ago. Runolfson theorizes the pullback coincided with the growth of organized sports and the shrinking of free time in a kid’s day. Thompson says the growing popularity of slot cars during the 1960s also played a role, and another factor, many agree, was a period of 15 years starting in the early 1970s when Lionel was producing lower-quality products under the ownership of General Mills.

Model railroading faces stiff competition from video games for children’s attention. The largest train demographic, says Runolfson, is 40 to 60, and then there’s a drop-off to the 10-and-younger market that’s now being introduced to trains by parents and grandparents.

“There are a number of hobbies like model railroading that are suffering because of video games,” says Tom Catherall, who teaches youth leadership at Brigham Young University and is a digital consultant for Marklin, a German manufacturer of high-end trains. “I’m also a stamp collector, and they’re concerned with getting young people involved too.”

Catherall says model railroading faces a steep challenge in trying to match the competitive thrill of video games, although he says collectors do get together and run their engines head-on to see who can dislodge the other’s from the track and compete to determine whose locomotive can pull more cars up a grade.

Drucker agrees that video games take young people away from trains, but he’s noticing the beginnings of a backlash.

“Model railroading is a hobby where you do problem solving and a certain amount of working with your hands,” he says. “There are a minority of parents who are saying, ‘I don’t want my kid sitting with the Game Boy or sitting in front of the computer -- I want them to be creative and make something.’ ”

Lost in the video swirl surrounding today’s youth, says Runolfson, is knowledge of the basic physical concepts that are learned when you play with trains and that were almost second nature to kids growing up decades ago.

“You try to talk to a 9- or 10-year-old kid about AC and DC current, and they’ve got a blank look on their face,” he says. “I listened to a lecture recently by [Steve] Wozniak of Apple. He talks about how he started out with Radio Shack kits, learned how to solder a diode and kept growing from that basic thing. It saddens me that our kids today don’t do that. Basic math skills, basic physical property skills -- they just seem to be kind of forgotten.”

For Runolfson, who is 58 and started model railroading at age 8, the hobby’s lure stretches beyond its education value, though. He likes that trains provide an escape to a fantasy world, where kids can go anywhere they want in scales ranging from miniature -- “Z” trains can be put in a briefcase -- to the popular “HO” and “O” and on up to the beefy “Gs” that are often set up in backyards. As an added bonus, he says, young railroaders can take their entire family along.

“I’ve had children, parents and grandparents come in to the store,” he says. “I don’t know too many things that three generations can participate in at the same time and enjoy.”

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Train talk

Convention

What: Great American Train Show, featuring displays of more than 10,000 model trains and setups.

Where: Anaheim Convention Center, 800 W. Katella Ave.

When: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday-Sunday

Price: $7; 11 and younger free

Info: (714) 765-8950 or www.gats.com

Model train shops

* All Aboard Model Railroad Emporium, 3867 Pacific Coast Highway, Torrance (310) 791-2637. www.all-aboard-rr.com

* Allied Model Trains, 4411 Sepulveda Blvd., Culver City. (310) 313-9353, www.alliedmodeltrains.com

* Arnie’s Trains, 6452 Industry Way, Westminster. (714) 893-1015. www.arniestrains.com

* Ron’s World, 105 Avenida Del Mar, San Clemente. (949) 361-5596. www.ronsworld.com

* The Train Shack, 1030 Hollywood Way, Burbank. (818) 842-3330. www.trainshack.com

* Toy Train Shop, 1829 W. Lincoln Ave., Anaheim. (714) 991-1040. www.toytrainshop.com

* Pegasus Hobbies, 5515 Moreno St., Montclair. (909) 982-6507.

* The Original Whistle Stop, 2490 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena. (626) 796-7791. www.thewhistlestop.com

Don Patterson can be reached at weekend@latimes.com.