I thought this Flimsies piece was a bit telling about how far detached the public has become from trains today. The person writing is apparently middle-aged and (if I read it right) works at a history museum in a train station. But his personal associations with trains were only from toy trains at Christmas and a ride on one in the Soviet Union in the 1990s...

http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll ... 80349/1005

I don't think that's too far from what the average citizen's experience might be today in the US, in fact others probably have much less, and think of trains more as obsolete dinosaurs, if they even know they exist.