Toy trains. Real trains. No matter—real or toy—everyone seems to love trains. Besides, there’s really no difference. With a little imagination, a toy train can become real in our minds.

Kids aren’t the only ones who like to play with toy trains. Adults do, too. Did you know that there are more than 300,000 adult toy train collectors and operators in our country? That’s right—adults, just like kids, like to play with trains.

Why this fascination with trains? Maybe it’s because trains have been very important to people. Not only do trains carry people from place to place, but people have sometimes relied upon trains for survival—to bring food and supplies where they are needed.

When the United States was young, trains played an important part in the country’s development. The most important event in railroad history was the finishing of the transcontinental railroad. One company, the Central Pacific Railroad, started in Sacramento, California, and another company, the Union Pacific Railroad, started at a point near Omaha, Nebraska. They met at Promontory Summit in Utah on May 10, 1869. Once the transcontinental railroad was finished, people and cargo began to crisscross the United States. The reason California and the West became so populated was that trains made travel to these places easier. The amazing agriculture of California was brought to the East by trains. The “salad express” brought fresh lettuce to the Eastern seaboard. Trains made the wonderful orange crop of Southern California available in New York City. Towns sprang up almost overnight where the railroads decided to lay their tracks. These towns were the beginnings of some of our nation’s biggest cities, such as Chicago, Omaha, and Kansas City.

The first trains were powered by steam. These steam locomotives burned coal or wood that would heat a boiler full of water to make steam, which drove the big wheels. In the 1950s, the development of the diesel electric engine greatly modernized rail travel. Diesel electrics used a huge diesel engine driving an electric generator that drove electric motors that were connected to the wheels.

Freight trains haul cargo such as lumber, new automobiles, food, and oil. There are different kinds of freight cars. Gondola cars carry heavy cargo, such as steel pipes, bricks, scrap iron, and lumber. A refrigerator car keeps fresh fruit cool and ice cream frozen so it will not melt on the way to the supermarket. Boxcars carry cargo of all shapes and sizes and keep it nice and dry out of the rain. Hopper cars carry loose cargo such as sand and gravel. Hopper cars also carry coal, which is used in our power plants to make electricity to light our cities. To load a hopper car, the cargo is poured into the top of the car and unloaded through chutes at the bottom. Flatcars, having no tops or sides, carry large flat items such as plywood, big machines, and building materials held down with ropes or chains. Piggyback flatcars carry semi-truck trailers, which can be driven to the railway yard and then loaded onto the flatcar.

Flatcars also carry heavy shipping containers that come by ship from around the world. Heavy cranes lift the containers off the ships and load them onto the flatcars. Trains take the containers halfway across the country. When a container reaches its destination, another crane removes it from the flatcar and puts it onto a flatbed truck, which then takes the container the rest of the way to its destination.

The automobile carrier is a special flatbed that is used for transporting new trucks and cars. An automobile carrier can have two or three floors and carry up to 18 cars or pickup trucks. To unload, the racks are adjusted and then the cars can be driven from one floor to the other and then off to the ground, where they are driven away to the car dealership.

In the old days, trains had a caboose. The caboose was the very last car on a freight train or on a passenger train. The caboose was the conductor’s office or the train crew’s home, and many cabooses had a wood-burning stove to keep the crew warm. From the cupola, or roof lookout, the conductor could check for signals from the crew way up at the front of the train. Most cabooses were painted red.

The first passenger train was built in England around 1825. Passenger trains carry people, baggage, and mail. Commuter trains travel only from the city out to the suburbs. Other passenger trains travel all the way across the country.

Passengers sit in cars called coaches. Most short-distance commuter trains have only coach cars. Long-distance inter-city trains offer passengers more services, such as dining or snack cars and sleeper cars. When I was a kid traveling on the Santa Fe, we had supper in the dining car while the sun was setting out on the Kansas cornfields. The food and the service were very good, and we dined on white tablecloths. Passenger trains sometimes have dome cars where passengers can sit high above the train and look all around. At night, you can look straight up and see the stars. The most luxurious way to travel on a train is to have a private compartment, where you have your own bedroom and bathroom, complete with a shower.

As a mother of two, I know how and why children are attracted to trains. As a child, I used to watch my grandparents’ toy train circling the Christmas tree and the engine puffing little wreathes of smoke. My grandparents’ toy train set had special cars just like real ones—a log loader, automobile carrier, and an animal car that even had a giraffe sticking its head out. There was a piggyback car, a coal car, a gravel car, and even a dairy car that spit out cans onto the station platform. This toy train set was so detailed and seemed so real that I could spend hours playing with it. To this day, trains seem to captivate me much the same way they did when I was a child. That’s why I love toy trains, too.

Bethany Zill is a producer/singer/ songwriter for TM Books & Video, one of the nation’s leading producers of quality educational entertainment that both kids and parents can enjoy together. The I Love Toy Trains series has sold near two million copies and won the coveted Parents’ Choice Award. To order, call 1-800-892-2822 or go online at www.tmbooks-video.com.