There are few toys as closely associated with Christmas as model trains. No one is sure how the tradition started, but for more than 100 years, people have been putting toy trains around Christmas trees.

Many adults fondly remember their parents setting up and playing with those trains, and some still bring them out at this time of year to keep those memories alive. But for kids these days, it’s often electronics and video games that capture their imaginations.

On a recent visit to the Nauset Model Railroad Club’s annual open house in Orleans, though, plenty of both kids and adults enthusiastically took in all the sights and sounds of five different train layouts, from the very small N gauge to the large G scale. Five separate worlds depicted real places, like the old Boston rail yard and the historic station in Central Falls, Rhode Island, or some imaginary landscape conjured up in a modeler’s mind. Throughout them all, dozens of trains of all kinds wove in and out of villages, cities, mountains and over rivers. The youngsters said they were enthralled with how real everything looked.

One of the club’s founders, Roy Jones, said it’s not just the kids who enjoy it.

“I get a kick out of it ... Somebody comes in [and] says, 'I wanted to bring my 4-year-old to see the trains.' [But] they're looking at the trains too,” Jones said.

But outside of model railroad clubs, are trains still as big a part of the holiday season as they were years ago? I put that question to Jeremy Walzter who owns Hobby Quarters in Foxboro.

”We get a fair amount of people coming in and buying traditional trains to put around the Christmas tree, and there's still a big tradition for people making villages and trains around trees, but that's a very seasonal, once a year thing," said Jeremy Walzter, who owns Hobby Quarters in Foxboro.

Waltzer said these days, kids have lots more choices in toys.

“What's very popular is radio-controlled cars, planes, boats, drones toy drones with cameras, drones without cameras," Waltzer said.

Waltzer acknowledged that it's ironic the technology that now has kids glued to their smartphones and other devices has been incorporated into the old-school model railroad world and made it better. Most trains these days can be operated wirelessly by using apps downloaded into smartphones and have more features, like more realistic sounds, lights, voices and smoke.

So although the hobby may be fading a bit, the tradition of running trains around the Christmas tree lives on.