I just don’t worry about it. One scenario – If there is a sudden (say over a 5 year period) influx of product from those who have gone on to the great train yard in the sky being sold on ebay, then the prices will be pushed down - this would result in people buying the old trains for sentimental reasons (say - that’s like the one my dad used to play with…) and interest a new generation.
I think cross-overs like the Polar Express will also have an impact, as well as the interest in Christmas and Halloween train sets with Department 56ers etc.
Jim Fortner is on to something with the new Polar Express and similar sets. That does resonate with the youngsters. Let’s face it, though: the hobby is going to look a lot dfifferent in thirty years than it does now, and we can only guess as to what it’ll look like then!! Imagine what folks would have said predicting the future of thre hobby back in 1969 when lLonel was being sold off and Flyer was gone completely…
I’m a war baby, born in 43. I have a son that is 3. He is train nuts. He has the Lionel Thomas the Tank Engine. He made us stop the other day when we went to Billings to watch the trains. He knows the “pumpkin seed” paint job on the BNSF engines. Another generation is hooked. My dad loved trains and I grew up in Aberdeen, SD on the old Milwaukee. At night he would “coast” me on the bike and we would watch the 9:00 pass by the State Street crossing on its way to Minneapolis. I got my Lionel set in 52. I have nephews that are grown up and have kids of their own. But all at once one of them is getting interested in trains. He had HO as a kid that didn’t work out. Too much trouble getting it to run in a reliable manner. By the time he got a Lionel in the late 70’s, it was time for high school. Now he is planning on getting back in the hobby and can’t decide to go HO or hit the hi-rail scene. I told him HO is for people with a bookkeeper mentality and three rail O is for people that want to have fun! I think toy trains are safe and the next 50 years will be exciting times. The technology will only get better! Let the good trains roll!
Boomers officially date from 1946-65 according to most sources. With any luck it will be 40-50 years before the last boomer turns out the lights for that generation. Even the earliest boomers will have another 20-30 years to fool around with trains. It’s early to be getting nostalgic about us guys and gals :).
I am not a baby boomer. I was born in 1972 and my Dad and I had our trains set-up in the spare bedroom. Back then it was almost all MPC and postwar for us. I purred over 70’s Lionel catologs till they litterally fell apart. At age 3 I received my (first train) a 1950 2046 hudson that I’m the proud 3rd owner of. Later in the eighties we had the good fortune of finding good post war stuff by word of mouth and garage sales. Back in forties and fifties kids removed their new trains from boxes. We proudly cleaned the dirt off of ares to see what was underneath. It sure was fun.
I really agree with Crip that the “collectibility” factor of the hobby has hurt it as much as it has helped it.
I know that from my many years doing displays at train shows, that there is interest from kids and young families. Kids STILL do like trains. Kids in my parts STILL see real trains running and quite frequently. AND kids recognize the railroads they see running locally: Nofolk Southern and Conrail. It was clear and easy to see the excitment of the kids and young parents when I ran these current names over the old hat names like the Pennsy and New York Central. I have locos in those names and not once in over a decade did any kid ever ask me to run one of those locos, but I had countless requests to run the CR and NS items.
I also got loads of comments, notes and letters from folks saying my display layout was their favorite. Huh? I ran cheap stuff, no TMCC or DCS, simple accessories, homemade items, all on a small 027 layout. There were always layouts with the top line expensive stuff - large layouts too. All with the latest gizzmos and yet folks would still say mine was the best. Why? Because I think they felt what I had done was practical, doable and affordable… my layout and display didn’t scare them off.
People asked questions. Mothers took notes how I made certain items. I always got questions where did I buy those smaller non-scale current road name locos? That happened a lot. Which is why I am such an advocate for train sets in CURRENT road names.
This hobby can go on and probably will. Lionel has said their strongest area of recent sales has been on the affordable end stuff… which makes one wonder why the majority of product offerings are on the high end side? The same side of products that put K-Line out of business… it wasn’t the 027 Alco FA or S-2 that caused K-Line to go under.
Actually the train companies may sue themselves out of business …
or put themselves out of business with their ignorance and foolishness fr
Allan Miller hits the nail on the head. To the doomsdayers, I say get off your dead horse, run some trains, and discover what this hobby is all about. We seem to lost the joy of setting a train on the track and watching it run. That’s all I really care about and could give a rats a%% where the hobby will be twenty years from now.
It makes me wonder if people are spending too much of their nest egg on trains and worry the bottom will fall out of them. They beat on the TCA and manufactures because they are doing a lousy job of promoting the hobby. Someone should really stick a sock in their mouths and teach them how to spend wisely because many of us are sick of their bickering.
The sky was falling twenty years for the doomsdayers and look where it is today compared to twenty years ago. It just keeps getting better every year. So who knows where it’ll be twenty years ago.
BY all counts the market has and will continue to decline . A new but much smaller generation of collectors will follow in our footsteps .The generation that buys the trains is aging, retiring, relocating and going to their rest. DUring the next 10 years a large amount of trtains will be put on the market becuaue of the changing demographic. More trains and as smaller amount of buyers equates to lower and more sensible prices.
That really concerns me. I see people come in to the local train store, lay down a few grand for a basement empire, then something happens and they have to sell it all back, at a loss of course. People overextending themselves (and not just on train purchases) isn’t good for the hobby, their mental and emotional health, their families, or anyone for that matter.
The Rockefeller Rule of giving away 10% of your income, saving 10%, and then using the remaining 80% for living and leisure expenses would do us an awful lot of good.
On the plus side, trains do retain more of their value than a lot of leisure pursuits, such as CDs, DVDs, and video games. (On average.) But they should be treated like that, not like stocks and bonds.