I have this gut feeling that the majority of us involved in this hobby are from middle age on up. I know I am surprised when I get to talking through PMs to others here at the Model Railroader Forum that so many of us all seem to be in our 60s. For me, I have been a modeler since I was 5-6 years old. The kids in my neighborhood were all for the most part model builders.
There is no doubt that the complexion of this hobby has changed in the last 20 years. The focus changing from needing to build our models to being able to purchase them ready to run. I want it understood right here and now, that I don’t think this change is bad, I only think that it is, what it is. Hopeful the change has allowed people who are not builders of models, to participate in this hobby.
Obviously, the majority of us are happy with this change, as we tend to show what we like, by what we buy.
This change in this hobby, is not unlike the changes occurring in other hobbies; R/C Model Airplanes, plastic models and all of the modeling hobbies have gone through very similar types of changes.
My question is for those people who did not build models as youngsters. Given that the modeling public is for the most part an older public, I’d like to know what you people who are in the hobby now did with your free time when you were young?
Please, there is no reason for this to turn into a Battle Zone if you can’t discuss this topic without losing your cool, please find somewhere else to participate!
No need for your thread to turn into any sort of “war”, good point about those with little or no experience being more readily able to enter and enjoy the hobby from so many of the RTR products. Also opens up the fact that people w/ disabilities able to have decent equipment that they can use w/o help or others having to build them.
I feel that most involved in the hobby, tend to have been modelers in thier youth, and would almost naturally be more mechanically inclined, a creative sort or like tinkering or at least have such desires in creating/ building.
RTR products are great for the loco/ rolling stock, yet some various skills are still needed to build a layout regardless of how simple.
I too am now in my 60s, was an avid modeller in plastic cars, boats and military A/C. Slot cars, RC cars and planes and later moved on to wooden shipbuilding. Of coarse all the while I enjoyed my Lionel from the first set at age 6. Didn’t return to the hobby until late 30s when my son showed interest at 5 year old. 25 years later, still at it and enjoying myself. Interesting to see others history and take on the idea.
I’m also in my late 60’s. Sharing a bedroom with younger brothers as a kid made building plastic models futile. I read, (still do), played board games and outdoor sports and hockey. At that time small town Canada had vacant lots that kids could play games on without being hassled, and without the land owner facing lawsuits if a kid suffered an injury.
I was in my late thirties when I became tired of static models and joined a club and got into trains.
Having both kits and RTR is good. Trying to put too complicated a kit together as a first project, or handlaying track without patient instruction would be overwheling. (I have never hand laid track)
Born in 1949 I grew up in the Bronx, NY in the 1950’s and early '60’s. My friends and I were what are now called free range children. We went anywhere we wanted as long as our stay at home moms knew about it. We made scooters from wooden milk crates and roller skates, rode the subway and buses (alone), biked all over the place. Pedophiles and other vermin weren’t running rampant as they are now allowed to do. I modeled trains, plastic airplane models, boats and ships. No one had cell phones, video tapes or video games. Soupy Sales, Captain Kangaroo, the three stooges, Laurel and Hardy were the funniest on TV. Stick ball, baseball and touch football were our seasonal sports activities. As I aged my hobbies influenced my occupation, and my occupation enabled me to afford my hobbies. So it was a win, win for me.
I did fly model planes, the older kind that were tethered to a pair of strings that let you control the elevators to make the plane go up and down, but that was all. One tank of gas and you’d be pretty dizzy from turning around in a circle so many times.
I did build other models, too. I had a cabinet of ships and airplanes. Nothing too advanced, just Revell kits. Who remembers the Visible V-8?
I liked the comment about being a free-range kid. We rode our bicycles everywhere. I’d keep my folks informed so they wouldn’t worry, but then we’d be off to the park or over to a friend’s house.
I’m 68 now, and I’ve been back with my trains for 10 years. It’s re-established a bond with a hobby that’s been mine since I was 4 or 5.
I’m a bit older than you guys in the post above. My Dad bought me a Lionel 027 2-6-2 for Christmas of 1945. It was used but looked brand new to an 8 year old kid. Our 1938 Plymouth needed a tire but Dad bought me the train and walked to work. That did it for me, Dad had a buddy that was a welder where he worked and my Dad had him make a metal stamp or die to make rails from tin cans. Because of World War II there wasn’t any track available anywhere.
I went grocery shopping with my Mother and I talked her into buying a Model Railroad Handbook in 1951. The four page article about John Allen’s Gorre & Daphetid hooked me on HO scale for life. I have built from scratch everything imaginable, early on because of lack of funds. I grew up building models and never stopped. I’m not normally in to RTR but if it appeals to me or my layout then I go after it. Building kits, scratch building, kitbashing and restoring is my thing!
My older brother wouldn´t let me play with his trains, so one fine Christmas santa brought me my own Marklin starter set and a kit for a depot as well! That was back in 1963 and I was a lad of 7 then. The depot I still have - it was assembled the same day! The Marklin trains, to which each year an addition was made fro Christmas and birthday, are long gone now, but the hobby stuck over all those more than 50 years now. OK, I have dabbled with plastic airplanes and ships, but that didn´t last long. At the age of 11, I finally got to the place to build a small layout.
Model railroading was done during Winter or when the weather was bad. As soon as it was dry or sunny, I was outside and out of sight of my parents. Miraculously, I always made it home on time for the meals - without a watch!
First hobby was model railroading. I have 8mm silent home movies of me running trains at age 2. We only ever set anything up from Thanksgiving to New Year, we didn’t have space for a permanent layout in our house, but I stuck with it. Over summers I would read books and magazine and plan the biggest layout I could fit in my bedroom and still use it for a bedroom. Never could get my Mom to allow me to go ahead and build it. Eventually I was able to build a 4x8 HO layout and leave it up, until I got bored and switched to N scale and built a 3x6 which stayed up until I left for college. Around 7 or so I started building plastic models, mostly planes and cars - only ever built maybe a half dozen before I lost interest. Dabbled in slot cars, never really stuck. I later discovered a 1/32 scale slot set my Dad had along with some old slot car magazines from the 60’s, and I stuckw ith it for a while, taking one of my plastic car kits and adapting it to the slot car chassis to make my own cars but I eventually lost interst and went back to trains. Same thing happened to my Dad in the 60’s, he had a few cars, ran them at the LHS, but eventually lost interest and went back to trains. So, I’ve pretty much been in model railroading for over 46 years.
ALso got into computers, about the time the TRS-80 Model 1 came out. I was about 11 then, couldnt afford to buy one but they sold the manuals seperately for like $5 so I had those and taught myself how to program, I just went along every time my Mom went to the mall and just stayed in the Radio Shack the whole time. ANd I did have a stint in model rockets in HS, my best friend also had rockets, and we built some neat ones, and also I built a launch system that used my pocket computer to run a countdown and trip the ignitor so we could both stand back and watch the rockets go up. But no matter what I do in addition to, I always come back to model railroading. Even in the years when I wasn;t actively building or operating anything, I was
I cannot answer your question as I was a real builder in my youth. However upon taking a long hard think of the 46 kids that lived in the 14 houses on our cul-de-sac from the time at age three years of age in 1960 when I went out to play as a very “free range kid” as were all of the kids. The kids that built models were the same kids that were involved in hockey, baseball, scouts and generally took part in the community as a whole, as did their parents.
The Saturday morning and after school TV watchers to a person, that I can think of, were the type that went to school and watched TV and would occasionally come out for a game of road hockey.
Through facebook I have seen what has become of many of these kids from my childhood and from what I can tell it has boiled down to the fact that there are people that let things happen and there are people that make things happen. Generally I think the more creative “builders” are the type that make things happen and generally do well in life.
I have noticed with my own kids that when they are up for hockey, swimming, school projects or anything that requires their participation they keep on doing very productive things all day after they get home. There are down times when everything in our lives stops for a couple of weeks and the lot of us become a bunch of sloths in front of the tube. Fortunately for us, after a very few days, the kids are chomping at the bit to get back at it. Now I see why my parents were always exhausted.[(-D]
I’m 67 and I can’t recall not having trains in my life…As a “free range kid” I rode my bicycle to various railfan locations in Columbus,Ohio while most other boys my age was playing little league or football.Even in my teen years I was more interested in trains then cars or pretty girls.
I’m 29 yrs old and I have been around model trains and railroading my entire life. I was born with the railroading gift. The first real railroad that I fell in love with was Amtrak because of the red, white, and blue paint scheme.
My first train set was a battery powered G Scale locomotive with remote control at the age 5.
I tried to visit the SP now UP rail yard every year, but lately it’s been difficult.
My first MRR magazine was around late 1995, and my first official train set was 1998 N Scale Little Joe. Santa Fe tank engine. I restarted buying equipment for my modern era layout in 2007.
No matter what railroad I model, I would like to model all of them.
In my 30s now. Had a small train set that would come out for Christmas but that was it. I never modeled anything really. The only thing close to that would be playing with various airplanes - balsa wood with the rubber band powered propellor, big foam planes, or making parachutes for GI Joe guys out of plastic bags etc. I played in the woods a lot (also free range), or rode my bike to meet up with others for the sport du jour (wiffleball, football, hockey, whatever). I played organized youth sports, cub/boy scouts, and I used to draw a lot.
Another fifties-era free-ranger here, from Akron, Ohio. When I was about four years old, my mother put me in the back yard and soon discovered I was gone. She was frantic until she got a phone call from the local drugstore about 4-5 blocks away. They wondered if she knew I was playing in the junk pile behind their store. As I got older, I loved hiking & camping (often with my dad), and found that knot-tying and carving/whittling were among my favorite Boy Scout activities. I built plastic models of automobiles, tanks, ships, and airplanes, plus one balsa flying control-line model. My passion was always the railroad, and many of my hikes tended to be near the railroad. Never wore a watch or carried a cell phone (what’s that?) back then. One of our favorite (unauthorized) play areas was a hilly, somewhat wooded property that was mostly vacant except for one area where Ohio Edison stored telephone poles. It was near the end of the area’s first Expressway, and we could tell when it was time to go home by watching to see how far traffic backed up. When it was back to a certain point, it was time. Often went for hikes with Dad and/or other friends at Gorge Metropolitan Park. We just told Mom we were going to the Gorge, packed a sandwich, and generally made it back in time for dinner. Never got into organized sports much. Played C.Y.O. football in 8th grade. Mom was worried that I’d be killed or something, but I got through the season OK. A month later I slipped on a wet sidewalk and broke my leg in two places. Go figure.
I feel sorry for kids today. Much too sheltered. Do they ever have adventures?
Hmmm, I don’t think I had any. Just went to school, did chores, and was only allowed to play videogames on the weekend. No wonder I lead an uninteresting life, all I do is go to work and game. My trains just sit, there’s just no motivation anymore not even to set 'em up and run them. I just keep buying them for that layout that may never exist, ok I’ll take my bad vibes somewhere else now.
Same here Brakie my bike took me to the tracks or the so called LHS but when i started to drive i found the real LHS’s and went to Bostic yard on the Clinchfield every saturday sometimes week days.
In my early-mid 20s and cannot recall not having trains. Sure I’ve had tines where I’ve been “trained out”, but I always come back to it. The other thing I do as a hobby is guitars.
I’m 68. As a kid I was mostly into board war games and when the weather was nice I was out playing - pickup baseball, exploring, shooting marbles, etc. I’m not sure exactly what free range kids are since the kids I knew all did that. I did build one model kit - U.S.S. Arizonia. Also did a lot of reading, especially in the winter.
Basically, I was expected to be home for dinner and in by dark. No big deal since all my friends had the same rules. Same rules for my kids in the 70’s and 80’s.
I was obsessed with trains from when I was little until I was about 13, then my interest faded until about 2 years ago (I’m 27 now). I finally finished college and got my career started and living in a house now with my very supportive wife so life is good. Bought a 4x8 and built up a table and having fun with my older stuff that I converted to DCC now as well.
To elude to the original question, up until 13 I built countless planes, tanks and cars along with my trains so I’m no stranger to building models. I enjoy putting together old blue-box kits but it also nice to have the instant gratification of buying a new locomotive or freight car and putting it straigh on the tracks. If you ask me, it’s all good! [{(-_-)}]
While my father had a decent sized lionel layout when I was very young, I could see that it was a kludge with its unrealisitc curves, etc. yes it was fun and amusing but not addictive.
So, I, like many others here built tons of Monogram, Aurora and Testors scale model ships and airplanes with a pal of mine. When the available shelf space was filled, we would have a “blow up day” and plant firecrackers in the least liked models in the back yard and have fun blowing them up, thus making room for more scale model kits to be built.
My first first true model railroad effort on my own was with a good scale model HO effort when I was 13 in 1959. Been in and out of MR ever since.