Chooch wrote:
>young children are not interested in watching grandpa work on the engine to keep it running. Staking wheel pins, lighting stinky fuel tablets, playing with alcohol, and making modification after modification would make the young engineer lose interest. If he is like my grandson, he just wants to watch papa train run the trains and watch them go! He even gets bored watching me service them. At seven years old, blowing the whistle is the highlight for him.
If that's how a kid turns out, then go with that.
My kids have been the exact opposite, bored by mere watching trains go by and wanting to be involved. I managed this is a variety of ways, but here's what worked for me with the Mamod.
My flat-roofed garage was buried in the ground up to window sill level, and was the ideal place for a Mamod railway. The Street Kids would knock on the door when they felt like it, and if convenient I'd take the Mamod box out. The kids would line up along the garage, with boxes for little ones to stand on. I would go through the whole lighting up process a safe foot from their noses, answering questions. Then the little train would set off up the slope with up to six heavy steel Mamod vehicles. At each lap, the kids would be willing it on to crest the hill. Although I can re-fill with both water and spirit while on the move and can run for hours, I found that with kids interest waned if I kept it going for long. Things might be different on a large garden railway, but on a small and tedious oval, it was the filling and lighting and oiling that caught their imagination. Of course the trick was to keep these operations to just a few seconds each, rather than the long wait for a boiler full of cold water to boil.
If anyone else sees things this way, then you don't even need the spirit burner. Get a second pellet burner instead, so that you can swop from one to another, and reload swiftly. That keeps up the fast pace little people like. The trick with pellets is to soak them in spirit before lighting. (Do it in a fireproof tray.) Doing this makes them light instantly and burn better - it transforms the whole business. Keep the water fill valve to avoid ever having to boil a whole boiler full, and I still recommend an upgraded safety valve and injection of thick steam oil every half hour or so.
Rules are simple:
- mind your hands and ask lots of questions.
After a bit of Route Learning:
- Kid watches the water glass, checks the fire and passes the tools and bottles.
- Grandad handles the hot stuff and takes orders: more water, swop the burner, more oil, another wagon - or take two off.
As the kid gets older, there's a new rule:
- If the thing stops, it's the kid's fault for not giving the right orders.
Oh, and Grandad re-stakes the wheels in private after bedtime ;-)
Please please don't entertain a kid with a beast so well behaved it might as well be electric - unless that's what your kid happens to enjoy of course. In which case a butane fired Sammy is perfect.
David
England