When I was growing up, we always had electric trains, and they were the American Flyers, which had the two-rail tracks, as opposed to the Lionel, which had three rails. In the summer, it was put away; but when winter came, my mom and dad would set up the tracks all around the living room floor, and they stayed there all winter. Every year, Mom would find new pieces, and we had the talking stations, loading cattle cars, and several really cool engines. My favorite was the "Super Chief", which was very similar to the train that we took when we went to see the Grand Canyon. I think we might have been on "The Chief", which was a less delux version; but the electric train that we had was the Super Chief, and even had the vista-dome car on it.
I grew up in the HO-scale era. My older brother had a "shelf" layout that ran around the basement, and as a little kid when I got bored with my HO slotcars I'd stand on a stool and look at his trains. After a few years I had my own HO train set-up and spent most of my time building houses and factories.
Here in Hawaii we have the Hawaiian Railway Society. Hawaiian Railway Society works to save Hawaii's railway history. They have restored railroad and trains and have rides every Sunday locally on Oahu. image from http://www.hawaiianrailway.com/fares.html where there is all the information about how much, when and other train riding information. Where the Hawaiian Railway Society located here. My Mother was a bit too young to have ridden the railroads that existed here locally. Her friends were old enough and spoke of how they rode the train to town for shopping and meeting people. We have a trolley car that's the mechanized trolley that takes people to shopping sights or other visitor sights. image from http://www.waikikitrolley.com/ where you can get all the information when you come to Oahu and want to ride the trolley. Waikiki Trolley also has other tours riding their trolley cars information here. I've seen these trolley cars as I go about living on Oahu. Okay I went a little off topic, but I had to brag a little for we have a Model Railroad Clubs & Museums-Pacific. Model Railroad Clubs & Museums-Pacific has events. Joseph Kreiss has a model railroad of the Big Island that I can't get pictures from so you've got to see his site: http://rrmodelcraftsman.com/boomertrail/cm_extra_bigisland.php.
"All aboard! Come along and see wooden toy trains as they zip along set to the sounds of real trains! A variety of different scenes were staged for the filming of this video and I think the results were well worth the effort. See wooden re creations of freight trains, Amtrak and commuter trains, old time steam trains and more! This fast paced video is sure to delight everyone"!