This is Trainman station! We will alight here. The doors will open, accompanied by a series of beeps. But this is not a real train station, it’s a miniature world of tracks. Now that we are inside, let’s take a stroll into the world of model trains.  

Our Trainman station is a YouTube channel called Trainman6000 where miniature platforms are built and trains come and go. This ‘station’ is run by Ivan Leung, a train enthusiast and videographer. 

In Perth, he is better known as the founder of WAMN News, a YouTube and online news service that covers state, national and international political and breaking news. Away from the rush of deadlines and headlines as a journalist, and the stress of managing an independent media news company, he spends hours with his model trains: building, filming and editing scenes that mimic real New York city railways.  

Leung’s media company started off in 2013. Now it has over 800,000 views a month on Facebook and more than 1000 subscribers on YouTube where it airs an online bulletin every Sunday night. Explaining the boost WAMN got when it took to live-streamin press conferences during the Covid-19 lockdowns he says:  “We have gradually become the CCTV of WA politics.” 

Livestreaming wasn’t the only thing that came out of the lockdowns for Leung. With limits on how much he could get out, he found time to do something he’d been pondering for a while, reconnecting with his love of model trains by making videos, not stop-motion, but real motion, filmed by pushing and pulling the trains along by the ends that are off-screen. Trainman6000, named for the central Perth postcode, was first launched in January 13, 2020.

Leung’s love for trains and specifically trains in New York, began when he was a kid watching the Disney movie Oliver & Company, (a retelling of the Oliver Twist story but involving lost pets in New York).

“I wanted to explore and see what it’s like over there as the cultural capital of the world,” he says.

That curiosity led him to the NYC Transit Authority website, where he studied the subway map. While on the site, he clicked a link to the New York Transit Museum, and that’s where he saw and bought his first set of wooden train carriages around 2013, when he was still a university student.

Although he is still Perth-based, Leung says 98 per cent of his audience are overseas. Many of his viewers are young adults who collect model trains, buses, and other transit toys and they feel connected to him because the stories he tells about trains and buses reflect their own experiences.

In his Trainman6000 videos he has documented more than 200 stations, and worked in references to news stories about events that happened on the subway and about new train models being released. Through his channel, people have formed connections and a community. When Leung finally visited New Yorkfor the first time in 2023, he met some of his viewers in person during a community hangout parade of subway trains.

That’s when it really hit home that his love of tiny locomotives isn’t just a hobby, it’s connected him with a community.

Vice president of the Australian Model Railway Association Bill Gray says Leung is not alone and many of the association’s members have been interested in trains since they were kids. 

“In my case, I was fascinated by steam locomotives from the time I was four or five years old. I still love to watch a steam locomotive working. The hobby goes some way to filling this desire, as well as satisfying a sense of nostalgia,” he says.

Through Trainman6000, Leung has applied his journalism skills of making and editing videos to a new project that has carved itself an online niche. The videos are gentle, no loud narration or explanation, just the gentle noises of trains on tracks, and a journalistically meticulous accuracy in making every cardboard station and wooden train as true to a real thing as possible.

How did he do it without even having been to New York until the Trainman6000 trains had been running for a few years?  “There is this thing called TrackMap,” he explains. “It is a map of tracks that allows you search the entire subway system.”

Trainman6000 has grown to over 24,000 subscribers and with more than 11 million views of his videos. 

Digital 2025 Australia reports that Australians are more engaged on socials than ever with 20.9 million social media user identities. YouTube comes second in time spent with an average of 21hrs 58 mins by Australian Android users per month.

Asked why so many people are watching model trains come and go from replica New York stations, Digital Marketing consultant and chief executive of SEO for Small Business Australia Bill Vasiliadis says: “People are drawn to sincerity and skill. In a world of fast, loud content, something calm and focused stands out. For many, it is a mix of curiosity, nostalgia, and the satisfaction of seeing something crafted with care.”

He also points out: “Not everything online has to be fast or sensational. Sometimes, watching something simple and well-made is its own form of stress relief.”

Vasiliadis further explains that niche channels work because they tap into passionate micro communities by sharing mutual feelings, thereby building trust which, in turn, builds a following.  

Gray from AMRA believes model train videos and communities work becuase they are a way to express interest in the hobby. He has his favourite channel and knows of others who use these platforms to fill in time. But some members of AMRA say they are worried that while some enthusiasts use social media to share their creations and exchange ideas, it can also make people less hands-on with the hobby.

Gray says: “It is quite possible that the advent of these online communities has resulted in declining model railway club membership, especially among younger people who are able to satisfy their interest through such forums.” 

The AMRA members are confident though that social media has not had much impact on their project of modelling the Western Australian Government Railways (WAGR) in S Scale (a model railway scale ratio 1:64 of the real-life size of the railway). They are confident becausethere are no videos of the group’s work online or an established S scale online community. 

For younger hobbyists, like Leung though, the joy of playing with trains and connecting with people is now bearing a new kind of fruit, in the form of money rolling in from YoutTube. This marks his emergence into what is being called the Passion Economy.

According to the VistaPrint Hobby to Hustle Report, one-in-seven (15%) of the 1000 Australians the research team interviewed in May 2024 said that they have already turned their hobbies into businesses, while over a third (36%) of participants reported that they have a secondary income, often stemming from their hobbies. Also, over half (53%) of these individuals said that their secondary income is directly tied to their hobby, showing a strong tendency towards monetising passions. 

Author of The Passion Economy, Adam Davidson, says it is all about monetising your skills, working from anywhere and making passive income if you can, and that simply means getting money for something that already exists, or that you do anyway, and doesn’t require fresh or additional labour.

Trainman6000’s first video showed two Auscision XPT Trains passing each other, to the sounds of a clatter of wheels. The video has over 2500 views and as people keep watching it, the income from it rolls in.

Though the channel started off focused exclusively on the New York subway, it has gradually expanded our to include other New York trains. The challenge of Leung is to keep making fresh content, so that people click through to find the old ones.

Vasiliadis points out that this can be a tough part of passion economy work. Creative fatigue and pressure to “scale” can be tough. Once a channel grows, the audience expects more, but the niche can only stretch so far. He says balancing passion with performance is the hardest part. 

The Model train market size is projected to touch $2.22 billion by 2033 according to Business Research Insight. The forecast is attributed to more people becoming interested in model railroading for fun and relaxation. Leung notes that model trains are becoming investment items in themselves with a model of the F train that cost $9 in 2007, now worth more than $100.  

While the sparkle of profits and good investments adds interests, Leung and Gray agree that money is not the real drawcard.

Gray explains: “I model the Western Australian Government Railways in S scale (1/64 scale). There is very little commercially available, so most of my models are built from scratch, using plastic, wood, card, brass, or anything else I think will do the job. This requires a number of skills, obviously, and probably comes under creativity, but there are other less obvious skills required, such as patience, resilience, perseverance and the need to remember that this still a hobby. 

With a sense of pride he adds, “I’m building a scale layout of Perth Railway Station and yard as it was in 1885. It required a lot of research, for which I have had to learn how to use the Battye Library, the State Records Office, and Trove, places where historical documents, photos, and archives are stored and made available for research. I had to make my own brick paper for the station building, which involved further research, and the acquisition of Photoshop skills to produce it correctly”. He then adds that whenever he was stuck he had fellow modellers in the AMRA WA club to call on.

His last point is a reminder that beyond the satisfaction of perfecting a craft, there is the community and its warmth and connections, like Leung’s experience when he visited New York and was greeted by people calling him the Trainman, excited to see the face behind the channel. 

AMRA WA has been a source of companionship, friendship and a shared interest for its members, especially for the older men in the group. The club fosters this social aspect with monthly barbecues and the challenge of organising its annual model train exhibition.

Leung agrees that encouraging communities and good mental health go hand-in-hand, saying: “Spending time with model trains and buses brings me joy, a creativity outlet, and a decompression chamber from my duties. I think it’s important for everyone to realise that we all have creativity. You’re never too old to play and make friends around the world in the process.”