With gas at $4 a gal here, and up everywhere, how has it impacted your RR hobby?
We like to go on steam excursions, and visit train museums[8D]. However this summer we may not be able to do much with the price of gas what it is. We are at the NY/PA border, and will do another excursion at Steamtown Nat’l park (a long hour away).
BUT, we were hoping to go to Strasburg PA and Steam RR again (4 hours away and an overnight away), and to go to W VA to Cass railroad (overnight and 2 day trip itself) and ride with the Shays and Climax trains. We were also hoping to go to Baltimore C & O museum.
The price of gas[:(!], though, has already put a kink in our budget and will definitely mean we may have to forget the other trips this summer. If we do manage to go, there will definitely be less $$$ to spend on the model RR hobby here at home, most likely:NONE [V] if we take the trips.
SO, how has/will the price of gas affected your hobby??
I don’t go to the hobby store as much. I go to the one in town for misc. items, but the one I go to for train cars is about 15 miles away. I don’t go due to gas, and thats the cars I use on Ebay. I look at it as why waste gas money for a few train cars.
Other than that, its not effecting my hobby that bad, but more on the other things (food, entertainment, etc).
Not at all here as well. I was able to get a new car that allows me to leave the 16 MPG truck parked in the driveway. The car is averaging around 37 MPG so I am spending less on gas than I was a year ago… Oh don’t tell someone…you know who, but it is one of those terrible Toyotas… It is a Yaris and I can even still cart a whole lot home from the LHS in it (as well as all the equipment needed to do on location recordings).
Actually, we have been looking into the Yaris. They have air and auto, but Doesn’t seem to come with cruise control, though, a requirement. The Chevy Aveo has our interest as well.
We are hoping to also move further out into the country, which will mean more gas used to get around, so a high MPG car is a must.
It appears to be available in a couple different options, so it should also be able to be added after market…
Mine was under $14,000 delivered including registration. Paid for by my Uncle. You may know him, Sam? Was able (thanks to a member of another forum) to get survivors SS this year so i was able to keep the truck and and buy a new car.
The price of gas has not really cut into my MR budget, I do car pool to the model railroad club with a friend. I do think twice about going long distances though. It normally takes about $50 to fill up my SUV(no, I am not selling it, this is rural Minnesota), and I usually put in 5 tanks/month. At least work is only a 5 minute drive, and I can work from home at least 2 days/week. I have friends who have a 45 mile drive to work!
Not at all. Although I have a medium-sized SUV, I drive less than half the national average so it isn’t a large element of my budget. Besides, I just finished paying my childrens’ college expenses so that my disposable income will be higher than before. With gas at $4.30-.45 here, one does pause at the thought of gas costing more than 25 cents a mile. Good thing I don’t have a diesel. Diesel fuel costs over $5 a gallon here (central California).
Not so much!! I just did a two week driving vacation down the coast, Napa, etc. to as far as LA. 5000 kms (3000 miles) - $800 for gas in my pig of a Jeep Commander Limited with a Hemi. More than I’d like to pay, but it doesn’t really affect my overall finances much.
The nearest LHS to me is in Alexandria, that’s a 120 mile round trip. My car gets 14 MPG on a good day. In 2005 it cost me about $9.50 to go there and back. This last weekend it cost almost $34! That’s $24.50 I could have spent on the hobby instead of helping to line some oil mans pockets.
The gas prices hasn’t hurt my hobby any nor will it other then making supply trips to my not so local hobby shop will be turned over to the UPS man when he brings my normal monthly order.
All of my major railfan trips is still a “go”…No need in giving up on life’s few pleasures completely.
Fortunately, I have plenty of stuff accumulated over the years. Even if I didn’t buy another thing I could model railroad for years. The result is that for the past couple of years I have been more selective and buying less. So this doesn’t affect the hobby much. But I am starting to cut down on trips and eating out.
We dont plan to cut our driving until 9-12 dollars a gallon at which point, all hobby spending shifts to internet only. Not hard to wave a credit card and whistle at the Brown Truck to deliver some discontinued, long out of production, never to be made again widget.
It hasn’t changed things for us here…We do the bulk of buying in Las Vegas 2X a year as the LHS’s here are not “N-friendly”. Anything else we want/need is usually found online.
Not at all! Despite the fact that we have excellent public transportation in the SF Bay Area, I rarely go to the LHS. I order almost everything online. When I do go, I just hop on the light rail, bus, BART, or Caltrain.
Gas here just hit $3.98 a gallon. We are down to one car, a 2002 Ford Explorer which travels about 8K miles a year or less ( yes, we are retired ). This car can be teased to get 21 MPG with level roads, tires at 32 psi, and not loaded with passengers or cargo, and an egg between my foot and the accelerator. It has not effected going to my LHS yet, as I go once a month. This is a 28 mile round trip. However, talking to the owner of my LHS, it has most definitely effected his business. Some of his regulars would gather at his store every Friday afternoon and evening, but now they only come once a month. Most are retired, and when you are on FIXED income, it is guns or butter ( Economics 101 ) or in this case, MRR or Butter. ( For you young ones that can’t balance a checkbook yet, go to college and you will understand finances better.)
Now as for that comment about Gas station owners…this is a huge misconception as to WHO is making all the money. Please understand the bigger picture here. The U.S. dollar has been on a skid for years, and now is at an alltime low. The Saudis get paid for their barrels of oil in dollars. BUT, our dollars are worth far less than several years ago, so the Saudis are not happy campers. So what do they do…they raise the price of a barrel of oil. And to make matters worse, we have investors called “Speculators” who buy oil on the Futures Market. What does this do? It runs the price of a barrel up and up and up. In simple terms, if I have one apple to sell, and 3 people want to buy this one apple, they will bid the price up ( you know like EBay? ) And now the Speculators come along with their money and they bid the price up even higher as they purchase barrels of oil, or apples in this simple example.
A point of interest, Exxon made around $25B in profit last year, but they also spend $14B trying to find
Okay, call me Un-American or whatever, but I have a German car. An Audi. My second car is a '63 VW Bug. A real Bug. Authentic. From the Black Forest, built by Elves. I use the Audi for longer trips, the VW for around town. Both are in the 40+MPG range, so I don’t feel the pinch as much as a lot of the rest of you–and believe me, you have my sympathy. These cars were designed primarily for the Autobahn and in Germany (and the rest of Europe) gas prices have ALWAYS been what we’re just starting to experience. Last time I was in Germany, about three years ago, the price was the American equivalent of an American Mob kidnapping ransom per Liter. So by necessity, German cars are more fuel-efficient.
With that out of the way, I’m still cancelling some long-range trips this summer. One I’ve left open–at least for the time being–is a trip to Colorado to ride the Durango & Silverton in July. Taking AMTRAK from here to Grand Junction and PRAYING that the Hertz in Grand Junction will have a fuel-efficient car for me to rent to drive down to Durango and tool around Southwestern Colorado for about a week. Which, I believe, will cost at LEAST the amount of the AMTRAK round-trip sleeper ticket. If not–well, THAT trip is cancelled.
But as far as eating into my hobby budget, I haven’t seen a real chunk–as yet, because I don’t really use gas that much–most of the conveniences that I use are pretty handy, within a couple of blocks, and the two hobby shops I frequent are each about 8 miles away.
But I’ll tell ya–if it keeps up, I’ll probably be screaming as loud as everyone else! From what I hear, it’s not the oil companies as much as the idiots investing heavily in ‘quick-return’ Futures. I don’t know how true it is, but if so, those greedy idiots need a really INTENSE lesson in History. L
In a couple of words, it hasn’t. My driving distance has come WAY down since my final retirement, so I have no heartburn about the high price of the fuel I don’t buy.[8D]
That may change if my petrol bill rises above my vehicle insurance bill…[(-D]
What I love is the computer-generated, “We think you’re coming due for maintenance…” mail from my vehicle service agency. It’s geared to people who drive farther in a month than I drive in a year.[:-^]
Of course, I expect that what would have been several single-purpose tourist/railfan trips will be combined into a single multipurpose circle tour - which means that I’ll actually spend LESS than I would have under the old system. Let’s hear it for efficient planning.[^]
Little, if at all. My wife and I plan our trips more carefully, and I now pay cash for all hobby items, as I finally got tired of the hobby following me home in the form of a credit card bill.
Patience keeps my trips to the LHS down to once or twice a month. There are a few ebay buys, but overall the amount allocated for the hobby hasn’t changed but a bit due to the shift in payment mechanisms. After the monthly trip there is a flurry of activity on the layout, then minor projects or the continuation of weathering or detailing projects till trip time the following month. Patience, patience, patience.
As to railfan events, we tend to stay local for those when and if they occur, and save for vacations that both of us can enjoy, such as cruises, trips with the grandchild and such.