At toy trains’ peak of popularity in the late ’40s and ’50s, parents would often spend as much as two weeks’ salary to purchase their children a set, which at the time cost about $65.

“The companies advertised that you were making an investment in a lifetime of play,” said Craig Chidester, of Westmont, an avid collector and member of several area toy train clubs.

Though toy trains are cheaper these days, Chidester says the benefits of playing with them are no less.

“Toy trains bring you into a different world,” he said. “Kids today don’t play.”

Chidester, who got his first train set as a hand-me-down from his father, said playing with trains taught him carpentry, electrical and a host of other real-world skills he used heavily as the owner of an earthmoving company.

Today Chidester’s basement is a living museum of Lionel train products. Around the perimeter, glass cases and rows of neatly stacked shelves display engines, trolleys, box cars, oil tankers and any kind of train car you can imagine — even a pastel set for girls.

In the center of the room, five different trains on multiple tracks loop through a mechanical toy wonderland of rising and falling train gates and a lot of other bells and whistles. All told, Chidester has at least 2,000 items and about 1,000 train cars.

Chidester and the Lionel Collector’s Club of America have a mission to get children playing with

trains again. At the club’s annual exhibition in Naperville, Chidester said he tries to show parents the value of doing something with their children, such as building a train set.

And children are still enamored, Chidester said. When the neighborhood kids come with their parents to play with his trains, they often sit spellbound as the shiny cars whiz past.

“It teaches kids how to play. ... That’s what we’re trying to show parents,” Chidester said. “There is no negative to playing with trains with your kid. It’s only good.”