Hello,
I’ve been a member of this forum for only a short while. I enjoy the forum, reading the questions and answers, and learning from the information. I truly enjoy the Sunday photos, (even though I only have dial-up, I can start to load the page, go to church, and when we get home, it might be done). But I have noticed a demographic disparity. It seems most of the action, shows, and events, swap meets, etc; happen on the East Coast or Midwest.
Other than Pigseye, IE Tim, a short jaunt up highway 95 from Greenacres, I don’t see many folks from the west coast or the Pacific Northwest. And Yes, I’ve been up to Cocolalla, ID several times; Heaven in the Mountains is a great description.
Looking for items for sale on Ebay, I notice the same disparity. It seems most items come from the East coast or the Midwest as well. I would love CTT to wade in on this. They are certain to know where their magazines sale.
Anyone have any ideas or thoughts on this. Do you know of activity or friends on the West Coast? Is this a predominately East Coast, Midwest hobby?
Well, Othe r than the St. Louis Cardinals, it wasnt until the 1960’s that there was a major league baseball team west of the Mississippi. Most of the population of the U.S. was east of the Mississippi.So about 99% of your postwar trains were originally purchased in cities and towns east of the great river.
In fact I think that the states west of the Mississip should succeed and start there own country. Heck you might as well take everything south of the Mason Dixon line as well. Everyone knows that us Yanks are the ones really running the country anyway. And since we’re running everything, we have all the trains.
I have a lot of friends in the hobby (various scales) who live in the west–California and Colorado, primarily. Garden railroading is VERY popular in both of those states, as well as in places like Arizona, Texas, Washington state, and New Mexico, among others.
In general, the hobby enjoys its greatest following in areas with (1) larger populations and (2) areas where railroading was and still is a highly visible mode of transportation. Naturally, the East and Midwest has an advantage in that regard, followed by the West Coast.
I’ve attended NMRA National Conventions and Garden Railway conventions in California, Oregon, Texas, and Canada, and can surely attest that there’s a whole lot of great model railroading going on in those areas, as well as in the East and Midwest.
As I recall, Pennsylvania leads the pack in terms of overall numbers of model railroaders and even model railroad stores, but that kind of makes good sense given Pennsylvania’s location and long-standing relationship to railroading.
Railroads have gone where they were needed. As industry tends to be near water ways and other resources, the rails serve businesses along these routes. Then, other business grows as it has access to transportation (rails/highways, etc). Being that the yankees were willing to trade open spaces and beauty for grey skylines, they got most of the railroads. The rails are beautiful, but they come at a high cost with regard to what comes with them. We have some trackage around, but mainly in hubs like Atlanta and Savannah. The rest we leave for natural beauty.
OK, enough digs at the yankees, As mentioned, most of the rails are in the North East corridor, and most of the industry is there too. In fact, most of the trains of old were limited to the NE and very few model RR companies bothered to put resources out west. Having travelled extensively, you do see some locations that for some reason have a large model railroad population and trainstore population to match. One such place is San Diego, they have lots of places to buy trains and have a museum etc. I guess this may be due to the large military presence and having people who grew up with trains around. I would be interested in other opinions though.
Dennis
Allan. Garden railroads are popular here as well as HO scale. But finding individuals who collect O gauge is not as easy. I guess I was thinking out loud when I started this post, that there clearly seems to be regional differences in the model train hobby.
Pbj – If you want us to succeed, I’ll gladly take the folks south of the Mason Dixon line.
There’s a reason I call my wife my southern belle.
Hold on here … We have plenty of demographics west of the Mississippi, I’ll bet their are more demographics in LA county than the rest of the country. LOL Also, if all the train development activity was left to the North East corridor, all we would probably see is rectifiers and other electrics running in circles. All the “monster” engines were developed for the vastness of the west, and mountainous terrains, not to mention the extensive distances. Besides all that, when you crowd a large quantity of any creature be it rodents, insects etc, in a small area their seems to be lots of em, however when they are sparsley spread out, they are very easy to count.
Seriously, there is a lot going on, I think San Diego has one of the best toy train museums if not the best one in the country. (I will be posting some pics from my trip there this past Thursday.) York undoubtdly is the biggest and best train show, but this year the TTOS national convention is being held in Costa Mesa, CA in August. And, we have Cal-Stewart in Pasadena in November. In So. Cal their is a train meet (local clubs) going on within 60 mile radius just about every weekend.
I recall reading some years ago that the strongest numbers of train magazine subscriptions were Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey. I reemmber at one time reading over the printed Lionel Dealer Directory sheet and noticed similar numbers reflecting service stations and retailers. I also remember that Texas and California showed strong numbers.
So I went to the Lionel web site and did some random counts of dealers listed on their website in random states I picked, which also includes service stations. Forgive me: I could be off by one, as I just scrolled down and quickly counted…
Alabama - 14
Arizona -16
California - 130
New York - 106
Pennsylvania - 159
Illinois - 77
Texas - 55
Granted all these numbers may not reflect dealers who carry full lines of Lionel… they may be full line hobby shops though who also carry some Lionel. But these are the ones listed on the Lionel website. Granted also, mail order muddies the waters alittle, but I would suspect that dealers tend to be where the buyers are. Which might also give you an idea where the magazine readers actually are. I suspect that even with the hard hits the northeast US has taken in good paying manufacturing jobs, there are still a lot of train guys in these traditional areas.
Dave, I know I’ve seen the stats you gave… where were they from? In my own unscientific surveys and from asking questions at train shows, I have always found the largest group of modelers and operaters are NON-command, traditionally sized 027 track users. I’ve always thought it was so odd that the train companies have made such a valiant and even foolish effort to court the smallest number of modelers.
In their last years K-Line spent more money on tooling and new product development than they ever had, mostly all on higher end product. While the products earned high praise and great reviews from the train magazines, it seems the buyers waited until they were blowouts before they
I don’t see any reason to secede… here in Texas, we have the best of both worlds. We’re both Texans and Americans. It’s no problem for us to ignore political correctness and any other weird Yankee stuff. We do what we want… it’s a free country, right?
(I don’t mean anything against Yankees… truth is, we love y’all!)
Now I have been called some pretty rough names but …Oh never mind I thought you said Democrats…[:o)]
In SoCal there is interest in “O” gauge rr but I don’t believe it is as strong as HO, N or G. On the west coast the homes don’t come with a basement where the typical “O” layouts are built.
Hey giz,
It was late at night and had a couple glasses of wine in me and was rambling on a bit. Thought I would stir things up with some sarcasm. And I cant even spell, but then again I was under the influence of some spirits. Thought for sure the Chief would have bit on this topic.
brianel027 has it right. The makers are concentrating on the expensive “:scale” stuff. Most of the other is plastic-truck cheapos (and there aren’t many choices either). I guess the guys with the big bucks rule as usual!
I have found that when I’m back east I can find all kinds of model trains stuff (lionel and marx,AF,etc) in most stores(antigues, 2nd hand, swap meets,junk stores,etc). But out here (San Diego) its hard (and VERY expensive) to find anything, except the train shows. I believe that is because , like me, most everyone moved out here (came out in '61 as a kid) and had to leave all toys behind. Same as the service men from WW2, they shipped through here, liked it and came back leaving their stuff behind. So all that good stuff is still back east and mid west. Thank goodness for E-bay!
This is turning into an interesting discussion Rod. One of the reasons we don’t have many O Gaugers around here is , some of my neighbors dont have electricity. Yes thats right, they use a generator when needed.
Also a general lack of information i.e. We just found out last week that smoking is bad for you.
Guess I’m lucky because I brought most of my trains from Texass, where the men are men and the sheep…Well you know what I mean.
Next time you’re up 95 this way, at Cocolalla Lake turn right and come up to the top of Butler Mountain and visit a spell…Yall come…Tim
I can’t believe you guys haven’t figured out why there are more trains in Ohio and Pennsylvania. When Lionel used to ship their truckloads of model trains west, the mob hi-jacked the trucks and gave the trains to all of us kids. [:D]
Back in the heyday of Lionel toy trains, most of the population was concentrated on the east coast and the upper mid-west. Thus the majority of sales were to those areas.
No coincidence that air conditioning was not in general use except in commercial structures.
Us native Texans wi***he population was still generally centered on the east coast and upper mid-west.