Child Toys Blog

Trains aren’t just boys’ toys

Trains aren’t just boys’ toys: When Aline Bergemann was a child, she got “boring” dolls for Christmas, while her three older brothers got model trains. “They wouldn’t let me play with them. Trains weren’t for girls,” she said. Now the 60-year-old Salem woman gets to play with toy trains as much as she likes as the only female member of the Corvallis Society of Model Engineers in Adair Village. On Saturday and Sunday, the group held its annual Train Layout Open House at its clubhouse in Adair Village. The event will continue next weekend as well. The organization’s president, Patrick Sloma of Corvallis, didn’t know why more women weren’t interested in model trains, but he added that it was an interesting nature-versus-nurture question. Scott Huiskens of Corvallis, who had a model train set as a child, said trains appealed more to boys. Huiskens attended the event with his 6-year-old daughter Alyssa, who likes trains, and his 4-year-old son Gabriel, who helps his dad play with the Microsoft train simulator on their computer. “My son’s really into trains. … I think it’s the whole mechanical thing. They’re big. Guys like trains, they like planes, they like automobiles. I think it’s genetic, they chromosome,” he said.

posted by Eugen @ 11/28/2005 04:46:00 AM