I think that this is precisely how children become involved in modelmaking in their lives. They see something like this, and something inside lights up and it shows through their eyes, Later in life, they will (like me) remember the first model their father gave them and built with them, or will remember the joy they found on a visit to a model railway in Hamburg, for example. They will learn lessons for life in perserverance, attention to detail, history, artistic techniques, working through and establishing logical sequences in building and completing a project. Some will go off on the tangential pursuit of counting rivets for others, and determining the validity of a model vs. a toy. Most will only recall the day that dad lit up their life by showing them a model railroad the likes of which they've not seen before nor since, and maybe the ice cream cone afterwards. If my dad were still here, I would thank him for the night he gave me a model airliner (DC-7) and sat down at the kitchen table, and built it with me. So. where's the harm in looking at a magnificent model railroad layout and smiling a bit?

I'm pleasantly stumped. There's a bunch of German model railroaders smiling at this thread right now.