My son is only just over two years old, but he’s already an experienced trainspotter.
Always ready for a few hours out lineside with Dad to see what trains are due next.
I wonder how long until he’ll be asking for his own camera – so far he just scrolls through the photos on my camera, making train noises the entire time.
Footnote
Train sets – I’ve lost count of the number that my son as received so far, but our house is overflowing with them: wooden, plastic and Duplo!
It would be odd but he may grow up not having an interest in trains at all. Lovely photos.
When I was younger I often went fishing with my dad, but now that I’m older I never go fishing by myself – it was just something to spend time together.
On the other hand I have friends who became interested in trains because of their fathers, and others such as myself who became interested in them on their own.
Other kids grow out of it – in my model train club one dad had his their children interested in Thomas the Tank Engine and the like as a child, but don’t care at all about the hobby as they got older.
On experience it just seems to happen – growing up in the 1980s from an otherwise non-railway background I’d remember the Harris, Hitachi and those new Comeng sets going through the level crossings around Noble Park in a time when they still had Parcels vans and L class electric locomotives. We’d look along the railway line through the Dandenong yard and climb up on the back fence of car yards like Coffey Ford on Lonsdale Street Dandenong looking for trains. Further afield I’d take interest in the still active electrified goods yard at Warragul or head straight for the station at Ballarat. We used to go to the annual model railway exhibition when it was still in Camberwell and make the occasional trip to Spencer Street station just to inspect the Southern Aurora and The Overland before departure. Looking back it was probably an era when we still had a large variety of rolling stock operationg, probably for the last time.