Attention youth organization leaders and members: TCA offers a variety of excellent experiences for your scouting, 4-H club, and other groups! Whether you need help completing requirements for merit badges, or you are looking for interesting new activities for your young group members, we are a great resource.
TCA hosts our own Youth Clubs, and we’re able to assist with programming for your youth groups, too. Find more information right here, or get in touch with us today.
The Train Collectors Association can help your scouts earn this badge, which requires them to demonstrate knowledge about railroads, including train safety topics. More information on this badge can be found here.
Youth in Model Railroading helps foster interest in the hobby while providing members a common outlet for sharing their passion for trains with like-minded peers.
By working with Hi-Rail model railroads, members learn the skills and joy of basic carpentry, safe low-voltage wiring, cooperation and teamwork and creativity.
Not sure where to start with learning or teaching others about trains? We’ve assembled some introductory information for kids about trains here on the TCA website! Listen to songs about trains, learn about train whistle signals, and so much more. Check out our links.
Did you know? Train Facts & Whistle Signals
Fun Train Activities
Songs about Trains
Suggested Reading & Viewing: Books & Videos About Trains
If you’re looking for a memorable and unique outing for your scout group, 4-H club, church youth group, or any other kids’ organization, the National Toy Train Museum (NTTM) provides a fun—and educational—experience that everyone will be talking about well into the future!
Our Museum has one of the largest collections of toy trains in the world, professionally organized and interpreted. And some of the exhibits are interactive, allowing kids and adults alike to run our trains!
The Train Collectors Association is divided into local Divisions for different regions of the United States and beyond. Within those Divisions, dedicated Kids and Teens Club Coordinators are responsible for programming our internal TCA Youth Clubs, and they can provide more information about coordinating events between our groups and yours. See who to contact to get involved.
TCA members who shop at Amazon.com can have each of their normal purchases generate a modest payment to TCA! And it won’t cost you anything!
The Train Collectors Association is now a participant with AmazonSmile, which is a special website operated by Amazon that lets customers enjoy the same wide selection of products, low prices and convenient shopping features as on Amazon.com.
The difference is that when customers shop at AmazonSmile (smile.amazon.com), the AmazonSmile Foundation donates 0.5% of the price of eligible purchases to the charitable organizations selected by customers.
The process is simple. Just search for and select Train Collectors Association when you sign up and shop at smile.amazon.com.
You use your regular Amazon.com username and password, but when you log in to smile.amazon.com, you’ll see that you are supporting TCA with your purchases:
Note that if you just log in to the regular amazon.com, this benefit does not operate.
There are no costs to either you or TCA, but TCA benefits!
This is a great way for TCA to earn extra cash to offset costs, so sign up today to help support TCA.
* Note: TCA is not a party to any of your Amazon transactions, and does not endorse any products or vendors.
In both cases, you will receive a donation receipt from the PayPal Giving Fund, and enjoy applicable tax advantages.
How to do it:
Click on the image above, or use this link. This will take you to ebay, where you will see the following page (log in to ebay if you are not already):
This offers TCA as an option. Click on the “Add to My Charities” button where indicated with the red arrow. Thereafter, when you make a purchase, at checkout you will be offered the option to make a donation to TCA in any amount of your choosing. Small amounts add up, larger ones are great! It’s always up to you!
The option will appear at the lower part of your checkout page, something like this:
If you’re a regular seller on ebay, you can allocate a portion of your sales proceeds to be donated to TCA. Look at the green arrow marked “Optional” above to see how to do it. Details on how ebay calculates the donation may be read here. This is a wonderful way to share the financial benefits of your hobby with the organization that promotes it!
An added benefit to TCA is that these donations are not subject to normal processing fees, so that makes your donation work harder!
* Note. TCA is not a party to any of your eBay transactions, and does not endorse any products or vendors. PayPal issues the receipts to you for your donation, not TCA.