Today’s kids are into HO because it is more affordable than O gauge. This is OK because while they model in HO, they are exposed to big O gauge with TMCC, sounds, and all. Even though they can’t afford O gauge, they yearn for it. This yearning will stay with them into their adulthood when they will be able to afford O gauge. How many of us had inexpensive trains as kids but yearned for big Lionel F-3’s and grew up to collect them as adults? Quite a few from what I’ve seen. Lionel is doing everything they can to generate a kid’s market but there is too much competition with HO. They (Lionel or MTH) have to generate the demand before they can afford big buck advertising. They are in sort of a grid lock. Their only real source of income is adults. It’s hard for us to subsidize because we complain too much about the prices. I see nothing wrong with Lionel catering mainly to adults if that’s where the demand is. If this is an adult hobby, then so be it. Why is that so bad?
The TCA membership decline isn’t a good indicator that the market is declining. The TCA is a collector based organization and many of today’s O gaugers are more model railroaders (hi railers) than collectors. Plus we have more train organizations now such the LCCA and LOTS. The TCA is based on the east coast which makes it inconvenient for mid west and west coast people. We have eBay too that has taken a huge share of the market.
So, tomorrow’s O gaugers are here today. They are just modeling in HO right now.
Pfui, that was a lot of posting to read (specially in English,it has a bit more effort then dutch). When children come over to watch my layout they are ENOURMOUS ENTHOUSIASTIC about the size and impressiveness of the trains in gauge 0. If you have h0, it is small compared to these machines. They would love to have one, BUT THEY CAN’T BUY IT HERE!! Seen the prices in the comments I think if Lionel would use the same pricing in Europe, marklin and fleischmann would have tough competition. Starter sets in europe (very tiny, beep like engine, 2 gondola’s and a circle of track with simple transformer) will set you back around 100 euro’s (125 dollars)
A lionel set as mentioned before would cost 120 dollars. Guess which one will attract more children? The big one of course!
The whole problem on this side of the atlantic is excactly as on your side; trainbuilders forget to make small affordable sets for children. ONLY marklin makes a special,less detailed and stronger build line (hobby-line) specially for kids, based on trains from the 70’s. They are good quality and a steam engine with tender costs about 100 euro’s.
A stsrter set will still have a 100 euro sign on it, but is with DELTA-control (4 trains at once) and has 3 wagons and a more attractive engine. ROCO, an austrian factory also starts to get the point and has begun to make a product-line which is less detailed and simpler painted, but with the same strong ROCO technoligy inside as the expensive ones. A 4 axle diesel sets you back about 60 euro’s.
Still it’s a bit on the hefty side for pocketmoney, but teenagers who work a bit besides school can buy those, and parents are more interested to buy those things for their kids. For a comparison, a playstation 2 costs about 250 euro’s (300 dollars) in Europe.
Here they starting to learn, now only start to use the right scale, then I’ll be satisfied too.
Yes, I think there are markets in Europe for 3-rail trains; good-quality starter sets with cool operating accessories. Hey, they’ve got McDonalds KFC, and even DisneyWorld in Europe, why not Lionel trains?
My daughter is 17 and was never much interested in trains. If I ever get another kid (I’m 47 so I guess that’s a possibility if I ever find someone), then definitely 3-rail trains, as I’m an advocate of bigger is better, but to be perfectly honest, I really think that a kid would enjoy G scale as well; esp. outdoors in the backyard. The prices are lower in some cases than 3rail as well. I’ve got my sights set on G for the future.
Thanks David for the reference and the starting of this post. Yep, this is a topic that can bring me out of the woods for a moment…
There are many good observations here made by you folks. I like the quote “out of sight, out of mind” in reference to advertising. It’s the truth. I’ve been saying it for years. I’m astounded with how many folks STILL believe Lionel isn’t even in business any more. The wonderful and innovative idea for their logo marketing campaign - where the Lionel name was on every kind of item - had no reference to the Lionel company itself, how to contact the company, where to find Lionel trains or even that the trains are being made.
A wonderful advertising idea that was only half baked. Advertising needs to lead the customer to the company and the product. I’m sure for many who bought those keychains, clocks and tins that had the Lionel name on it still have no idea the trains are still being made. The licensing program should have had a stipulation that there be some kind of reference or mandated line on how to contact Lionel or how to find their website.
One more thing that hasn’t been mentioned directly here that I’ve said before, and will say again. It is the quest to please the adult market that has also helped place the beginner market in the back seat. The precious dollars are being placed into product development and tooling for scale-sized adult products. The move of production from Michigan to China hasn’t saved any money for the customer buying Lionel product. Prices on Lionel product haven’t fallen much at all save for a few select items. The move did enable Lionel to divert more money though into product development of the new scale-sized, scale detailed product we have seen since the move was made. There has been hardly any new tooling or product development for beginners and non-scale traditional product. The last thing in this area from Lionel was the Waffle Box Car from 1995 - and I’m glad they’ve put this in their tradtional starter ca
It is a sad state of affairs, when you don’t enjoy your work. I skimmed over those interviews in OGR mag because most of them looked like infomercials instead of serious discussions about the future. I’ll go back and read the Lionel one.
If I had to choose a toy train company to work for, I think I would pick Atlas. They are pricey but they always seem to have great quality stuff, whether 21st century signal system, track, attention to detailing; they always seem to be at the top of their game.
dav
I’m not so sure tomorrow’s O gager’s are modeling HO today. The first reason I got into HO first was I bought into the myth that HO could be done on a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood and O couldn’t. The second was I thought that HO still had playability. This was based on a book that showed quite a few TYCO opperating accessories. Sometimes I’m slow took me awhile to figure out that the reason I could not find any was that TYCO had gotten out of the market. I couldn’t find anything like a culvert loader . Thor’s site proved to me O could be done in a 4 x 8 space.
From what I have observed non-train parents and train interested children are drawn to the busy playability of O at shows as contrasted to the modeling skill exhibited by HO and N displays where the only action is on the tracks. I still believe afordable, <$100, quality , expandable Lionel style O is what is required to save the hobby.
I believe there is one part to the equation Elliot left out. He is right that if you place 1950 prices in terms of 2004 dollars. The prices do track fairly well. Where the difference comes in is income. I am convinced that if you are not making 10 times what you or your father was earning in the mid 60’s you do not have the buying power he did. So while a 20 - 50 dollar starter set in the 50’s may well convert to $150 to $200 2004 dollars the percentage of income used to buy the set is greater today than in the 50’s.
Some of the Fed Reserve web sites have CPI calculators that do the conversions and I want to play with them some more.
This has been a good topic to follow.
As a new member to the form and O gauge railroading, I would like to add some of my views.
I got started with O gauge when my son was given a lionel engine and tender this past year. I then went to the local hobby shop to get some track and acc. for him. I was shocked at the prices of the starter sets and of the engines.
Since then I have attend train shows and picked up some postwar lionel trains and acc. and restoring them. The engines and other postwar acc. have been great for us to get started and have not been a big bite on the family budget. We do not need all of the new bell and whistles that are on new engines. I have watched people at the hobby shop pick up starter sets and then put them down when they see the prices and move on to a HO or N gauge.
We have a blast just watching the trains on semi fasten down layout some of teh used acc we picked up at train shows.
The main thing for me is how long will my son play with it and is it easy for me and him to maintain it and not cost a lot. I know one thing since we got the trains he has leaned how to wire them up and the switches, it has open up new doors of learning for him. This is very important to me I want him to have fun play with the trains but also learn on how they work and the care of them.
I am not sure if the following comment is germane to the conversation, but perhaps it may shed some light on the situation. One of the reasons post war costs were so low was the lack of product variety. Take the 6462 long gondola. For most of the time it was made, it had one number and one road name (NYC). The body color may have changed over the years, and the amount of detail decreased, but it was the same car. Lionel could make huge runs to reduce cost further because they were under no pressure from collectors to make it in another road name. When you look at the number of “new” products each year, it is surprising to see how few original items were offered each year. Nowadays, even the $25 starter set cars are revamped each year with little carryover.
If compared to normal German / Austrian brand model railways, even Lionel trains are comparable, and have much more to offer. If I see the prices in CTT or on the internetshops, I’ve a hard time not to get a credit-card. Compared to what we are used to here, they are not expensive. A normal Roco Br01 sets you back for almost 300 euro’s, that’s a normal price. For that money you can also have genuine Lionel!
And, even if Lionel seems to be expensive in the USA, a Roco engine is not in a good shape after 50 years, and certanly won’t run, but my F3’s are 50+ years old, and worked as soon as there was any voltage on the tracks. May be not the cheapest, but quality it is!
The whole problem seems to me that the directors of the big toytrainfactory’s don’t actually enjoy playing trains, but are there because they know things about earning money. One of the most important things is:
Keep production there where people buy the stuff. You can abort things to china, but no-one in china wants those trains and with their wage they wouldn’t even be able to buy them. BUT in the mean time, you take away the money to a different country, where different people get paid where they don’t buy your products with.
The people who do want your products must first find a job somewhere else, and because every investor runs away to China, there are not that much jobs left. With that you don’t get much of your product sold. Yes, IF you sell something, you earn a bit more, because the margin on your product is higher, but it’s the wrong way. If you sell one locomotive and have 25 dollars profit, you did a good job. But if you sell 1000 engines with only one dollar profit each, you did much better!
Investors need to focus on something FORD invented, he simplified the production of cars, and paid his workers that much that they could buy one of these cars themselves. That is marketing and that is profitable, it works much better than running away to china to save money on personell and then getting back to amerika
I love this topic. Elliot’s comment on wooden trains and playability was spot on and forces me to make the following TRUE confession of how I got started in toy trains…
Nine years ago I was 38 years old and my wife of 13 years and I decided to have a child. So my wife’s preger’s and we are hitting the baby stores looking for just the perfect crib, rocker and such. Noticed Brio for the first time. Started playing with Brio in the store, after all cribs start to look alike after 50 or 60 of them. Bought a Brio set … for the future child of course. Played with Brio at home … bought more Brio, really cool stuff for the child … wife is still preggers… played with Brio… Santa brought me, I mean my future son another Brio set … Son’s born … we play Brio… we buy Brio … detour through HO as mentioned earlier … now happily PLAYING with Lionel and going to shows.
So there you have the true confession of a grown man that Brio brought back to the fold. One other confession, I did have a small oval Lionel layout when I in the 5th grade but it was given to me the same year I found out what a garage sale was and that people would pay me money, late 60’s dollars, for stuff… Wish I still had my old Lionel, my Ideal Motorific set, my old Hotwheels, comic books, etc. …Can’t blame my mom or my dad, emptied my room of my own free will … pure greed.
I remember Motorific! I had a set when I was a kid. That then lead to Aurora HO slot cars. That Motorific set is long gone, though, along with the slot cars. Think they ended up in the trash.
This is off topic but my Aurora HO slot cars went in the same garage sales. There appears to be a little interest on ebay for Motorific but much more interest in Aurora HO Tunderjet cars and track. There apear to be small independent companies resin casting new bodies to supply an apparent increasing demand for Thunderjet bodies. Ok back to trains. I’ve noticed a few comments in HO slot car forums about intergrating train sets inn their racing layouts.
The Aurora and the Tyco roadway systems both had HO grade crossings available. Tyco even had huge combo sets including both trains and cars up into the 80’s.
I think eventually, it was determined that too many kids were learning bad habits about racing trains at grade crossings, and that track section was discontinued.
Then the whole slotcar market collapsed, when RC took over. Now kids were no longer tied to a track, they could make their own dirt track or race course.
Why is the consensus always that we are failing to attract children to toy trains? We collectively may be doing just fine, although we won’t know the results for another 20 to 30 years.
If you think about it, between Thomas, Brio, train shows, mall displays, store displays, and marketing efforts like the World’s Greatest Hobby program, what Lionel did with Wendy’s last year and will do with the Polar Express movie this year, and what MTH did with Macy’s in New York last Christmas, toy trains are far more a part of popular culture today than they were 20 years ago.
If you go back 50 years, trains were a much bigger part of everyday life, but today all of the marketing efforts in the world aren’t going to bring that back.
If you’re expecting to toy trains to be as popular with kids as PlayStation, Nintendo, or Gameboy, your expectations are unrealistic. I’ve got 5 boys at home ages 11-17 and I was a Cub Scout den leader for 6 years, so trust me on this one.
Lionel is owned by Wellspring, which is an investment company. Wellspring is looking for a return on its investment now, not years into the future. MTH and the other companies also need to be profitable in the present, and must balance that need with the need for new customers in the future.
Either Lionel or MTH did indeed advertise in Boy’s Life. I saw the ads. MTH advertised in National Geographic, too. If the ads had worked, they’d still be there. Remember, while Lionel and MTH are big companies to us, in the real world they are small potatoes, and can’t possible pay for all of the advertising we’d all like to see.
As for Toys R Us and Wal-Mart, those companies are in it to make money, not promote hobbies. If another toy sells more units at a better profit than a train set at Toys R Us, then the Toys R Us people are going to pull train sets off the shelf and replace them with the more profitable or high
I know this is heresy, but is attracting kids really the key to survival of Model railroading, toy trains, whatever you want to call it?
In the early days, model trains were toys, expensive toys, but toys. Like Lionel and American Flyer. Not anymore. It’s a great activity to share with kids, but except for some starter sets, most model trains are bought and used by adults.
And the real growth in model trains was in HO, and, I think, mostly by adults. And aren’t the majority of N scalers and Garden railroaders adults? The same with RC planes and cars, boats, and wargamers? I read that the video game industry has flattened out because they can’t attract more adult gamers.
Model railroading is a specialty hobby, like those I listed above. It’s main appeal is to adults who like collecting, operating trains, modeling and scenery, or those that are nostalgic for what they had, or wanted, as kids. Kids like toys they can handle, like Thomas, Brio, and Lego. Most modern trains won’t stand up to that kind of handling, because that’s not what they are made for.
Which model-railway doesn’t attract children???
It attracts children, but parents rather buy a playstation because it’s cheaper. And it’s rediculous to compare any train with a playstation. Most of the children have both, or at least want both.
No, I guess the whole problem is the fact that money is the main issue about toytrains these days and not the toytrains themselves. Money is nice to have, if possible more than you need to survive, but if it’s going to overrule the major issue, something is wrong. The major issue in this case is building model trains.
Of course the investors need to see results, but it need not be that way that people don’t buy your stuff because it’s too expensive. If you, as a factory with a name everybody knows, accept that people buy other brands than yours because of the price, you are making a HUGE MISTAKE. People are prepared to pay a bit more for good quality (name!!) and if you make it well and sell it for a nice price with the good name on it, you can make a good profit.
Lionel will never have a good profit this way, they moved their factory, not to lower the prices, but because everybody else does. Probably their margin is bigger, but they sell less, so it equals out…
I’m not the expert,but if it would be my factory… Those chairmen lack the sence of pride for their product. If you’re proud about your product, the last thing you do is move it to a low-cost country, where building procedures are less precize, where plastic recepies are not well tested and where employees stay away when they got their paycheck.
I can’t emagine you can guarantee a good productquality at a good price that way. Really good operators, who know about things do cost about the same in china as in the western world, they are not stupid. Only the assembly would be a low cost job, because you need nothing else than a sort of hands to move with and some sight to see what you’re doing, but such laybour is also cheap in the western world.
It’s not about toytrains
PLAY VALUE??? Bah!! I am an adult, my kids are grown…play value??? To me play value just means that it runs well. I’m sorry but the maudlin treacly image of the wise smiling (condescending) adult teaching wide eyed kids how to operate his train makes me want to gag. There! I said it! That’s just how I feel…so sue me. And the thought of those greedy rapacious capitalists actually making a PROFIT off my purchase of their merchandise doesn’t bother me a bit. The manufacturers are no more likely to make trains at a loss just so you can have cheap trains than you are likely to work for no wages just to make THEM more profits. I read this thread until I just had to blow off steam. THAT’S MY TWO CENTS WORTH too. Odd-d
Upon reading my post above it could be construed that I don’t like kids. What I am trying to express is that too many people hide their interest in trains behind a curtain of saying, " Oh, these trains aren’t for mee-ee, Oh no no nono no, they’re for the (ahem) kids, heh,heh, heh," when the kids are not in the least interested. I guess the kindly father figure gently introducing the child into the wondrous world of railroading has been done to death with me. If my grandkids are interested in my trains I’ll be happy to show them, but I will not chase them down the hall to try to make them evince an interest in them. Most people who buy the starter sets just hand them to the kid and then go off to watch the news and sleep in front of the tube. That’s pretty much what my dad did. Many people assume that if a kid is young he will automatically know all about trains without any effort on their part. For most people the ideal toy is something that will keep the kid occupied and out of their hair. Our tax guy once brought his son over to our house to show him my trains. The father asked me to show my trains to the kid, and the kid just rolled his eyes up at the ceiling and said,“Aw-ww, dad, I don’t wanna look at this ***!” So I shrugged my shoulders and turned off the transformer. The father asked me again and I declined unless the kid himself asked me. The father looked at the kid who sighed and asked me in avery unenthusiastic manner so I complied and a strained time was had by all. Odd-d