A few possibilities for why people find trains fascinating:

1. Their place in history. Sailing has been around forever, but only recently in the grand scheme of things did land-based travel become quick and convenient. And trains did it. Cars came later. Trains revolutionized both industry and personal mobility.

2. Nostalgia for a time in the past when they were at their peak, before they were partially supplanted by cars. There's something intriguing about a technology we don't use nearly as much anymore but was once able to bear a key part of the burden of making society tick.

3. Cars and trains are both neat machines, but most people own or have access to a car, so there isn't a feeling of mystery or exclusivity around cars. How many people get a chance to drive a train even one time in their life?

4. Where they are used, trains naturally make themselves the center of attention. With cars, they come and go constantly, so the arrival or departure of a car isn't really an event. The arrival or departure of a train is an event, often with a schedule. When they were the dominant form of transportation, in a small town, probably everyone in the entire town knew what time the train arrived. Trains also make a lot of noise (whistles, horns, engines, etc.), so that's another way they're the center of attention.

5. A passenger train is part of the public sphere and is a location where things can happen. So it is its own social setting, like work, school, church, etc. are social settings.

Your list reminded me of a brilliant adventure/detective game "The Last Express" that manages to capture quite a few aspects surrounding trains - joy of traveling, historical significance, nostalgia, confined social setting...

Trains were also responsible for the need to make advances with another geeky / hacker favorite:- Accurate time keeping, along with standardized time zones.

Interesting point. I'll mention though that accurate time keeping that worked on sailing ships was a navigation breakthrough in the 1700s. It's what you need to figure out your longitude.

https://sites.udel.edu/materialmatters/2018/03/21/its-all-re...

Ah yes, indeed they were accurate. I should have been more explicit about widespread agreement as to what the precise time that should be accurately measured actually is/was.

My pet hypothesis is that train systems are intellectually complex, but bound in a framework of knowable rules. It seems like some people just can't resist diving deep into systems like that (credit card rewards, board games, or, of course, computer programming).

OMG I think you've just explained my wife's obsession with frequent-flyer points to me. (And she flies a lot, which is a desirable prerequisite.)

I think you just summed up the reason why I enjoy games such as Factorio and OpenTTD so much :-)

There's something that seems to make train sets much more universal. Compare it to slot cars which are nearly identical technologically but don't have the same geek cred. The only complexity difference is that you get some track switches if you're lucky, but I remember some slot/rc car systems having things like that too. The other big difference is the speed, maybe being slower let's the analytical or imaginative parts of the brain engage?

Described my Lego addiction to a T.

Link to TMRC's site:

http://tmrc.mit.edu/ (no SSL/TLS available)

It's amazing how in a model, such as this one, the control system has gone from a bunch of mini-computers and relays over the years, to these days, in modern layouts, tiny DDC control modules and very compact hand held DCC controllers. And on top of that a reasonably mature common control protocol defined by the NMRA (https://www.nmra.org/) that's pretty standard world wide.

I was a rail fan growing up, and my dad and brother are still in the hobby. I always thought the fascination was pretty simple: trains are the biggest machines that are ubiquitous and can be observed up close in virtually any populated area.

Also why no (or almost no) female model railroad hobbyists? I think there's a male aspergers thing going on.. same reason you'll see men programming for fun, but not so many women.

They are big engineering problems that move and in the case of steam if not managed properly explode.

That’s innately cool to a certain subset of people (including me) also the minutiae and detail required to run a complex rail system safely is again fascinating.

Here's my anecdote. Ever since I was about 3, any large machine fascinated me. Construction vehicles, trains, planes, even the garbage trucks making the rounds in my neighborhood, and the dumpster trucks making their rounds at my school. At least for me, it's simply a fantasy over big giant machines. Maybe not so different from how native Amazonian tribes sometimes mistook airplanes flying over the rain forest as gods.

Some of this is the romance of steam. My love of steam comes from my father, he was around in the 50's and 60's when steam was superseded and disappeared in a very short period of time. He spent hundreds of hours photographing the last mainline steam in the UK - before it was gone never to return.