A Question: Is this a stereotype?

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Oddly enough, I happened upon an aspie in my province who loves trains...but that's only one out of the many, many examples of aspies I've seen. Transportation seems to be a common interest though...I can think of at least 4 people who are into buses, and 1 into ships. People need to move beyond the misconceptions of this stereotype though.

Trains are cool.

I never had any interest in trains; and I only interest that I had with dinosaurs was in the context of a general interest in animals.

The trains thing isn't really a stereotype, it's a common obsession among young male children with autism, so is dinosaurs, among other things.

With female children with autism, more specifically with AS, it's more 'normal and acceptable' topics of obsessions like animals or philosophy.

Lol, and lets not forget Pokemon, and Yu-gi-oh! and video games.

as a kid it was animals and dinosaurs, after 14 it has been art and poetry.

never interested in trains...they are loud, scary and take too much time to pass when I am in a hurry.

I actually have a slight phobia of crossing train tracks after watching a driver's ed video of what a train can do to a car that stalls out on the tracks.

I like trains a lot. I especially like the London underground. I think the love of trains seems to be more common with people on the lower end of the AS spectrum/HFA. Not saying all people like this though. I know a guy who loves tractors A LOT. I now can name all the different brands of tractors! I also like watching videos of tube trains when I am stressed and I also like looking at the London underground map.

The stereotype that upsets me the most though is that all people with AS are geniuses, especially in the maths department. I was unlucky enough to get a specific learning disability in maths (dyscalculia) which means I am absolutely rubbish at maths. My IQ is on the low average so I am not a genius either. I can draw buildings in 3D but apparently that's not intelligent

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I have HFA, ADHD, OCD & Tourette syndrome. I love animals, especially my bunnies and hamster. I skate in a roller derby team (but I'll try not to bite )

Trains are great because they can't jump out at you and run you over, they can only go where the tracks are, so can't take weird and wonderful diversions dumping you in the middle of nowhere, and having spent the £100 million per mile or whatever it costs to build a railway you can be pretty sure that it won't close tomorrow. A bus service on the other hand could be closed overnight and the vehicles taken elsewhere.

Hmm, it's just come into my mind: Having a rubbish memory may help to develop creative skills, like re-inventing math, physics, geometry theories, rules, just because you don't remember well... It's similar to the experience when you see a movie or read a book for the Nth time, and still enjoying it not remembering the plot and sequence of the scenes correctly...

Trains were only one of my interests, as well as electricity. Interestingly, my friend, whom I used to refer to as being a HFA, practically loves trains, knows many details about them (much more than me, although I know a great many myself), collects old rail-road maps and timetables, often wanders in mind on those tracks, entertains gentle nostalgic feelings toward more glorious past eras of railways and train/locomotive types, loves train simulators, watches youtube videos, dreams about narrow-gauge forest railways etc etc, and he's 16 years older than me... And for him trains are only second after music.