Nancy Workman, a vice president of Sountraxx and handy with tools, told me an interesting story. She was at a place where a group of men were in the process of assembing a large layout and had pressed everyone they could into helper service. She volunteered her assistance, and they were delighted. When she asked where they wanted her to help, the leader asked, “Well, could you bake some brownies?”

In the sixties, Lionel offered its Lady Lionel train set, featuring a locomotive in pink. It didn’t do well. The pink locomotive and the brownies are connected by a common misconception that trains are mostly a guy thing. They aren’t. Women love trains just as much as men, if somewhat differently. Little girls are just as fascinated by trains as are the boys. I spent a career in teaching and have seen it first hand, over and over.

It’s easy to market model trains to men. When it comes to women, some of the approaches seem open to question or is that just a male perception? When I’ve talked to some model railroaders about trains in the classroom, I get questions such as, “What do the girls do while you’re making the presentation?” The answer is, they enjoy it just as much as the boys. Our assistant editor, Jennifer Lindsay, is a very feminine young lady and also very devoted to trains.

Of course there are some differences. Only the boys have asked me to stage cornfield meets; the girls don’t care so much about manufactured catastrophes. However, the mechanical aptitude difference between boys and girls seems to be limited. For example, girls grasp (pun intended) how a knuckle coupler works just as well as boys.

So how do you market trains to women and girls? The answer is simple: by including them. Show pictures of girls enjoying trains, of females soldering track joints, of women engineers (there are lots of them) helping girls onboard a locomotive. Half the people on this planet are women, and their money spends just fine. The garden railway world is filled with women, and they aren’t restricted to the plants, either. We can grow the hobby in the direction of girls and women; all we have to do is listen to them.

And please: no more pink locomotives or brownie requests!

John Sipple
Editor