Whats with the steryotype of us liking trains?

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I like buses, not trains and they have to be old and red.

i grew up with trains right behind my house as a child, so it's kind of a "part of me". i wouldn't call it an obsession but i've always had an attraction to the concept of trains, and how they operate in their own dimension and routes which the common masses really aren't privy to. sometimes i fall asleep with the train scanner audio on from those websites that stream them.

Only trains I would like would be the train in Benny & Joon Sam was on and the tour train on wheels in Riverfront Park

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkQj6pNKiWo&feature=channel_page[/youtube]

also I like trains. better than the bus

I love trains!

When I was about 4 (no older) I lived 3 houses away from the station for the trolley through Villanova PA, our property backed up to the tracks. One day I went up to the station, and crawled under the platform so I could see the workings underneath the cars. Unfortunately they were having a vandalism problem at the time. Someone saw me down there, and next thing I knew someone was calling for me to come out from there. I did, and found a man with a gun pointed right at me!

i never really liked trains.
i do like planes however.
trains are bound to where the rails take them, and they do not have excellent grip (so they can not climb steep gradients, or accelerate or decelerate rapidly).

i am not interested in timetables, because i do not care where the trains go.
i do not ride trains much at all.
but i have an extreme lifetime interest in airliners.
i know all the sounds of their engines, and i can tell what type of plane is taking off without looking at it.

trains are boring.

but high speed trains are not boring when you have a film from the front window.
here is one that reaches 300 kph.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc7Jy12kKJE&feature=channel_page[/youtube]

THe train thing might be a cultural artifact. If this was on asperger's initial list of symptoms that would be the 1940s. Model train culture was a signature hobby of the withdrawn from at least then through the 1960s. I dont know the full history. At some point the pool of available hobbies expanded and interest in model trains was reduced. First the rise of paper wargames and then the rise of personal computers come to mind as alternative hobbies for the withdrawn.

When I was a kid there was a still a culture of older men, many with those black 50s glasses, taking an intense interest in model trains. I remember that Dick Van Dyke made a joke about having a train set out in the garage at one point. Which may have had more meaning at the time, as if he was alluding to being a dork.

Of course it's supposed to mean full sized trains as well but there was a time when the toys and hobbies were more likely to reinforce that.

I just came home from a holiday filled with MASSIVE amounts of trains!!
For a week me and my traindriver husband rided trains around diffrent places for approx 8-12 hours per day.
So I guess I can count myself in

Here's a stereotype that we can all laugh at. All stereotypes are laughable wether its' Indians being good at math and science, Ethiopians being starving and poor, Italians loving pasta, white South Africans hating on blacks, Brazilians obssessed with soccer, Mexicans with large families and being illegal in the US. It's all ridicoulous. I laugh.

Okay, I wouldn't mind owning this train...



Or indeed, this one:

I loved trains when I was little and kinda still do today.

I wouldn't say I had any particular interest in trains, although, simultaneously, I can understand why someone might. It's like the basic thought pattern, liking maps, schedules, etc., is there, it's just that in my case it hasn't manifested itself in the form of trains. It's strange... although I don't actually like trains in themselves, I can imagine myself trainspotting and still getting some satisfaction in recording the information.

I do like model train sets. That's a combination of enjoying the construction of the landscape, and then watching the train just go round and round the route. I could watch that for hours.

This thread is making me want a train set really badly...

I've always loved trains (wanted to be a train driver) and had an expensive set as a kid which only went in a circle (cos the track was so expensive) they were LGB trains. I could put my kitten in one of the carriages. But I didn't get obsessed with them.

Well there's this kind of scenic railway...

(Switch-back ride)



Or this...




(Side Friction Coaster)


Both kinds are rare now though .

Glorified funfair railways .

I don't mind these at all.