LOL! Ain’t that the truth!
I know my mailman, UPS and FedEx guys all know darned well what my hobbies are!
After all the boxes of stuff they’ve had to lug to the front door. There’s no doubt in my mind.
Heh. [:)]
John
Your’s and Jeffrey’s comments are reasons why I think that the hobby is larger than what we may think. Especially as the population ages, retires, and choose MRRing as a way to re-live their youth a bit, when real trains were a bigger part of their life. There may be declining activity in LHS’s, but overall sales and activity thru the web mailers and used-product markets allow for modelers to become active without necessarily being public.
Also, the image of a model railroader is still that of someone who plays with trains. You know what I mean. Unlike other hobbies, like skiing, hunting, boating, golfing, etc. that are more public, and can be projected as status symbols, MRRing is more of an introverted hobby, in that it is pursued for ones own specific tastes, and there is less of an incentive to make it publicly known you are a MRRer.
Interesting… I’m not disputing you, but of all people to feel the need to make such distinctions… Heh-- I would think that any warm (or nearly warm) body able to prop themselves up and subscribe / purchase their publication would classify as a “Model Railroader”… [:P] Especially when handing out numbers to advertisers…
John
That’s right, John, and I’ve long believed that the dwindling numbers since the mid 1990’s were precisely why MR chose to cease publishing its readership surveys back a decade and more ago, after a 50 year tradition of doing so on a regular basis. Simply put, those numbers were becoming increasingly disappointing in their sales pitch to potential advertisers.
CNJ831
Instead of debating the number of people in the hobby, we should make more of an effort to get more people into and to realize it is not just playing with trains. I love sailing but sailing is in decline in this country. I have taken a people out who thought it was a lot work and hard to do from what they have seen on tv or in movies and once out on the water it changed their minds about what sailing was and some of them have gone on to buy boats or to be come regular crew and if everyone who sailed regulary took a few newbies out a season it would help the sailing world out. One of guys I sail with I told him about my trains and he seemed interested in it so I will have him over soon to see what it is about. So everyone should grab a friend and show them some model railroading. Even if 10% of them get into it, that is still 25,000 new folks to the hobby.
289,343.
…344, Mr. B. You forgot Niel Bessougloff. [:D]
The relevance of how many model railroaders there are is partly due to one’s perspective. A practical factor is how much a modeler spends on the hobby, and in particular, those items directly identified as model railroad items. For instance, a modeler who scratchbuilds his structures from Popsicle sticks has less an impact on the hobby economically than one who purchases craftsman kits or ready-made structures. A person has more of an impact purchasing flex track than purchasing plywood. In other words, a hobbyist spending $50 a year on model railroad items has less relevance to the health of the hobby as compaared to one who spends $500 or $5000. The numbers of model railroaders is not more important than how much they spend on the hobby collectively when measuring the hobby’s health.
Mark
HAHA. My UPS and mailman know what my interests are too. I told the UPS man about it one day and he said I wasn’t the only one in town that he knew of. He also told me he supports my hobby as long as each box weighs less than 20 pounds.
Bob raises a valid point but I can truthfully say that trains have always been a constant interest for me. I was a hardcore gamer for about six years. During this time my free time was spent playing or discussing strategy for one game or another, but eventually my gamer friends and I reached a point where we had lost our interest in video games. I think this is pretty common, as my friends and I used to spend our weekends (and week nights) online together playing video games (mostly World of Warcraft). Funny thing is that when the glow of video games started to fade, the trains were still there. Lesson learned: video games arent really an infinite void that suck up the minds of young people. Everyone has a limit to how much they can play video games, some (like me) just take longer to reach it.
IIRC, in the mid-80’s I read an article in one of the model press magazine stating that this hobby had approx. 250,000 adults purchasing MR products (active model railroaders) in the USA and Canada.
This might still be a realistic figure in 2010 although I have no way to determine the validity of such a figure. Thanks for your output.
Michel D.