The Asperger's Express: Why Aspies Love Model Trains

I’ve noticed that one of the most common search strings that leads to this blog is Asperger’s and model trains. Since I’ve learned a little bit about this topic, I thought I’d share my observations about the connection.

In the Asperger’s universe, model trains have advantages over life. As I have written elsewhere, the proportion of people with Aspergers in the general population is eclipsed by the number of my fellow aspies to be found in a model train store on a Sunday afternoon. Why is that?

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Model trains are much more than little machines. They are the centerpiece of a microworld where the engineer engineers the entire creation. In a lot of ways, the owner of a model train layout is a lot like the protagonist in a 1941 science fiction story by Theodore Sturgeon called Microcosmic God about an iconoclast who creates and controls a new species. If you love someone or are someone with Asperger’s, I highly recommend you read the text or a scanned version. Sturgeon didn’t know about Asperger’s because the label didn’t exist in 1941—but he knew enough about they syndrome to paint an accurate picture.

The world of a train modeler (often called a layout) has many advantages over the real world.

Real life is unpredictable, but a layout is highly predictable. If you want them too, the trains can literally run on time. The weather never interferes; and virtually all problems can be solved. The train set is mercilessly, relentlessly rational.

Real life is filled with humans, human emotions, human idioms, human impulses and human ambiguity. The train layout is also filled with humans, but they are plastic and permanent. If a scale-size worker is standing next to a depot, he’ll be standing there again tomorrow—he’s glued to the layout! This kind of routine predictability is comforting and calming to a person for whom the word is constantly disquieting and stressful.

Where human interactions are complex and inscrutable, trains and train operations are complex and completely knowable. Those who model trains can specialize in locomotives (which they like to call “motive power”). They can be expert landscapers, historians, or archeologists. At their most creative, train modelers are artists in four dimensions. They bring the entire physical world to life by operating the train on a scale approximation of an actual train line operation.

For an adult with Asperger’s, playing with trains is not play. Trains satisfy the need to think deeply and drill down to minute details, but model trains are mostly free from the challenges of anticipating and adapting to the social environment. To see a room full of train enthusiasts is to see an environment where a person with Asperger’s can shine. The emphasis on technical knowledge paired with genuine enthusiasm for arcane details is genuinely exciting. The de-emphasis on social sophistication and divergent conversation creates a safer place.

I’m sure there are many people with Asperger’s who don’t care for model trains. I’m certain many model train enthusiasts have no trace of Asperger’s. But where the two domains overlap, you will find a world where people with AS can relax into themselves and experience joy without anxiety. For someone with Asperger’s, that can be a gratifying way to spend time.

The Aspies you love might not be into trains, but I'll bet they're into something. Maybe they need to spend time in another world because the normal world wears them out.