I am of the AlanB generation. I/We grew up watching cowboy movies and the inevitable "train robbery" There were western movies/TV programs showing the western life and peopling using trains and stage coaches as their primary mode of transportation. West of the Appalachians as AlanB posted on another thread, towns grew around the train tracks/depot not the other way around.
My great Uncle was a engineer for PRR in Western Pennsylvania for 40+ and his home was almost like a train depot with the regala. I lived in a coal mining town above the Monongahela River in Western PA and the coal train tracks were only about 1/4 mile away. Every one of my friends(males) in our pre-teen yearswanted to be a train engineer, fireman or policeman and NOT a coal miner. Later we just wanted girls, but that is a whole different story altogether.
My (4) year old grandson is a Thomas the train fanatic and when we visit back east near Baltimore, he has me read EVERY Thomas book EVERY day to him. I now know EVERY trains name by sight and let me tell you that is not easy for a 63 year old. He has wanted this one train that also doubles as a crane to lift disabled rail cars/engines back on to the track. My daughter is teaching them financial responsibility so they are doing "chores" (remember that AlanB) to earn money for toys they WANT. He finally earned enough money and got Harvey the crane train. My daughter said on Facebook, that after he was playing with it for about (20) minutes she snuck back in to the family room and saw him holding Harvey in his hands and saying, "I love you Harvey" The boy has the train bug bad. Him and his sister took the train ride out of the Baltimore train museum a couple of months ago. I am looking forward to when he and his sister are old enough that wife and I can bring them both back west by train.
I also found out on my first LD since 1991 from LAX-CHI-WAS in Dec 2011, that train "people" will actually "talk" to you. Not the useless babble you do on the plane or at the airport. Real conversations.Some was humorous and some was heart breaking. Train people feel the need to be "real" They feel they can trust you. My degree is in Economics, but I minored in Industrial Psychology. Talking with train people has taught me more about people than I could ever learn from a book or class. I've meet people from the right and the left, rich and poor, young and old, white and black, newbies and rail fans and there is this sense of happiness that is heard to explain. It is like the bad and the ugly in the world can't find them here. I have heard please, thank you, excuse me more on the train than anywhere in society presently. I guess train riding makes you civil is the only way I can explain it.
NAVYBLUE