CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Some lucky kids will unwrap a serious toy this holiday season. Its roots run deep in American folklore, but have spread farther. CNN's Anne McDermott unwraps the mystique of model train enthusiasts.</s>ANNE MCDERMOTT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Don't call them toy trains. These are model railroads, as intricate and forever fascinating as the real thing, though no one seems sure just why.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Maybe the romance of the rails, I don't know.</s>MCDERMOTT: Well, it's a romance she's carried on for 30 years, inside her house and outside. What's changed? The trains. They're getting more high tech all the time. The Los Angeles Model Railroad Society uses a computerized, infrared system to power up their trains and avoid crashes. Funny, that's what kids used to like about this. But now model railroading is a $4 billion-a-year business, thanks to innovations like the digitally-recorded sounds of actual trains. Another innovation: Lionel's wireless control panel that uses chip technology; and it was made possible, in part, by rock 'n roll. Neil Young, you see, is himself a model railroader.</s>ALLEN DRUCKER, ALLIED MODEL TRAINS: And it was actually Neil Young who went out, took his own money, hired his own engineers and had this system developed.</s>MCDERMOTT: And now Microsoft's coming out with a train simulator available this spring. Hey, who's driving this thing, anyway? The kids don't care about such details. They just care about what it looks like and how it sounds. So, how does it sound?</s>UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: Wow!</s>MCDERMOTT: Maybe someday he'll be part of this; part of these people who all started out the very same way.</s>DRUCKER: At some point in their childhood, they were given a train. Anne McDermott, CNN, Los Angeles.
Model Trains Capture Christmas Imaginations