It’s a railway conundrum: model trains are toys, yet the vast majority of people obsessed with the hobby are older men.

How to get kids more involved?

“We are in our 60s, 70s, even 80s,” said Fred Molly, director of the Castle Shannon Volunteer Fire Department model train show. “As we get older and decide we’re going to die — and believe me, it happens 100 percent of the time — it’s the question of ‘What are you going to do with [your train set]?’

“Often, the kids don’t want it. That’s what this venue is for. We are trying to enhance the hobby to a younger generation, getting someone to say ‘OK, maybe this is cool.’ I see it happening. In a lot of event places, you see a lot of families, a lot of kids. It’s not just an old man’s group anymore.”

Both the CSVFD hall and the adjacent office/​garage were packed Sunday with buyers, sellers and browsers happy to talk about the history of model trains, and of course, tales of real railroads.

Almost 200 vendors had tables or displays, as well as groups such as the Western Pennsylvania Model Railroad Museum in Richland, the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum in Washington, Pa. and historians from both the Montour Trail and the Montour Railroad.

If it had wheels, tracks or involved building tiny little houses and stores for tiny little model people, someone was in every corner of the facility to discuss it.

Mr. Molly, a full-time fireman, and six others have put on the show for four years. It’s one of the state’s biggest, a rarity as a fundraiser for a fire department. For those not over-trained from Sunday’s event, there’s another coming around the bend: the massive Greenberg’s Great Train and Toy Show Nov. 12-13 at the Monroeville Convention Center.

The Castle Shannon show had a mission: get the younguns’ to love trains. One of the groups was the Fort Pitt division of the national, nonprofit Train Collectors Association. Its “Kids Club” layout was given prominent display, featuring factory models with blinking elements such as the old Clark’s candy sign.

Justin Sheldon of McKees Rock brought his daughter, Selena Mann, 5, to see the trains. He recalled riding the old Port Authority streetcar line from Smithfield Street, Downtown, whenever his family visited his grandmother in Castle Shannon.

The TCA gives free membership to those 18 years old and younger, and many shows admit kids at no charge. It certainly didn’t hurt that one of the more eye-popping displays was assembled by the Steel City LEGO User Group.

With plastic rails, the brightly colored plastic-brick LEGO train ran off an internal power source of six AAA batteries. A cityscape of buildings, trees and passers-by was liberally sprinkled with classic LEGO characters, including Homer Simpson driving a tractor and Emmet from “The LEGO Movie” standing in a doorway.

John Emph is the treasurer of the Western Pennsylvania Model Railroad Museum. Now 72, he said he can’t remember a time when he didn’t have trains. His father was a track foreman for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, and on vacations, they would ride the rails.

The museum is open from mid-November to mid-January, drawing around 12,000 visitors a year.

“I still have my trains, but I don’t set them up anymore because I can play with the trains out at the museum,” Mr. Emph said, smiling.

There were large displays, such as one by the Pittsburgh Garden Railway Society, and small, “N” scale trains. Bob Mehler’s grandmother, Esther Mehler, opened a hobby shop in Millvale in 1938. Trains remain a big part of the business’ DNA, and its N scale model featured the tiniest of figures.

Now, the challenge is to get those tiniest of railroad fans “all aboard.”

Maria Sciullo: msciullo@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1478 or @MariaSciulloPG.

First Published: October 31, 2016, 4:00 a.m.