White River Productions’ Railroad Model Craftsman and Model Railroad News editors participated in a USA Today story on the connection and importance of model trains and the Christmas holiday:

For many American families, Christmas isn’t Christmas without a tree decorated with lights, ornaments, tinsel – and an electric train circling merrily beneath. No one knows precisely when the train custom started, but it has been a part of Christmas in the U.S. since the early 1900s, rooted in nostalgia and passed down from one generation to the next. “Railroads were part of the American consciousness at the time,” says Hal Miller, editor of Classic Toy Trains. “If you wanted to travel long distances, if you wanted to go anywhere, you did it by train.” But children had special reason to love trains.

“Trains brought everything from visiting relatives to all the goods in town,” says Tony Cook, editor of Model Railroad News. “The train under the tree maybe signals the path by which the Christmas gifts arrived.”

The popularity of Christmas trains has varied over the years but continues to endure and evolve. Train setups range from a simple loop of track on a snowy white bedsheet to handcrafted villages with painstakingly detailed churches, railroad stations, water towers and other features…

You can read the full story: usatoday.com