One, that [obsessively] lining things up is supposed to be an early indicator for autism @ c.2yo.
Two, Thomas The Tank Engine (children's books, cartoon featuring living trains with their faces on their boilers) is supposedly beloved of those [boys] on the autistic spectrum.
The latter is weird to me as it's pretty orthogonal to anything to do with trains AFAICT. The trains might be coincidence and the structure of the stories with the strict roles and narrow characters might be the appealling part?
I think the bright solid colours helped too, there is perhaps something soothing about simplicity and trains offer excitement with less of the unknown than road transport.
A lot of autistic kids like trains. We tend to like trucks, construction equipment, and machines in general, anything that's orderly and has a lot of information available about it; trains are a quintessential nerd interest (see: model train hobbyists, trainspotters), so there's a whole community out there to tap into.
I would guess that Thomas the Tank Engine intersects trains and children's TV in a particular way that resonates with a lot of kids who began with an interest in either.
Solid colours, may be a factor, train livery often is quite bold too.
But I don't think kids need to have experienced train travel to have the effect, and real trains aren't so simple; road travel is far more commonplace for most and so is not unknown?
Part of it is that there are some clear, actionable goals and direction when you use them (get to platform/ terminal X by 3pm, then get on, then transfer at X). It's a nice break from the open-endedness of everyday stuff. There's no way to make anything happen faster or slower, and there is very little decision-making except what to do while sitting, or what food to grab.
The machines themselves and the logistics of the overall transit systems also seem very impressive and elegant.
Mind you, I'm female and there have been proposed some significant differences between males and females on the spectrum, never mind the differences between any two people.
Books can also be a good distraction, but depending on how crowded the bus/trains are, sometimes not of much use.
Now, the real reason I'm here to comment: Do you enjoy being inside casinos? They can be very daunting in terms of the amount of sounds and light indicators flashing everywhere around you at all times. I'm sure the sheer amount of people and the realization that there are more cameras there than many other significant places on the world combined doesn't exactly endear somebody to casinos, either.
That said, I was curious how somebody on the spectrum sees, thinks, and feels about such spaces since they are very unique and you can't exactly find them everywhere around the world, either.
This worked great for me until I lived in NYC, where the 4/5 express might become the 2/3 express en route to manhattan. Really have to stay on your toes as often as they cancel whole routes.
Getting on a crowded bus can be a miserable experience, trains are a lot more consistent with their accelerations and don't have 90 degree turns.
It's the equivalent of a modern city's telephone system still using switchboard operators instead touch tone phones, fiber optics and a digital switching system.
Then I'm guessing your subway isn't the NYC subway...
I'm on the spectrum, and the city where I grew up in (Seoul) was in the middle of a major expansion of its subway system while I was a teenager. I'm sure I tried every new line, every possible combination of routes. I knew the entire system by heart; I could tell you in a heartbeat the most efficient way to get from any station to any other station.
20 years later, I'm still fascinated by maps and other geographical databases. I built the only FOSS postal code search engine in the country, currently used by over a thousand online stores to validate shipping information. IMHO my program is way better than commercial alternatives because developers who work for $large_corporation simply aren't as familiar as I am with how the various administrative divisions of my country were conceived and have evolved over time.
In any case, surprised that those boys are not affected by crowds of people (a lot of random, unexpected touch). At least in my case, it is an easy way go get a sensory overloading.
