Whenever I think of model trains I think of Gomez Addams....
I enjoyed watching the trains crashing into each other. Gomez always had the funniest maniacal grin when he crashed his trains.
My friends and I would occasionally pool our resources and come up with a "mixed consist" of windup, battery, and power pack locomotives and rolling stock.
The main objective of each get-together was, naturally, cornfield meets. Or in our case, living room carpet meets.
I had a lot of fun, as long as it was the other kids' locos that were involved.