I just received an E8 from BLI with sound today and opened up the box. It sounds good and is run to run.
Twenty years ago, E8’s were not even available except for the AHM or Riv model. Today, most models are available and the hobby should be appealing to many new people if we can just get them to look at hobby again.
The Trix Big Boys have set new standards for running qualities and BLI has given us more than a dozen new steam and diesels in the past three years or so. It has opened up a whole new market and curiosity for new visitors who see the trains and hear the sound they can make at open houses and club shows.
Let’s get out the word about this hobby and stop complaining.
yes and i think it will continue to get better year after year.going over the last few years modelrr mags it’s simply amazing what the mfgs are offering us as compared to when i started in 1965.i can’t wait till i get my first loco with sound as im sure i’ll have more than one eventually.same goes for dcc.i haven’t any steam loco’s yet but i have seen the BLI sound loco’s perform and it’s amazing.we are very lucky to have these great products available to us.terry…
I believe LHS are carrying much more selection. (other than UP) The only thing that is happening is the hooby shops are carrying more and getting a better selection except…They are dissappearing. You have to drive out of your way for them now. And soon people will just start buying everything off the web since LHS are not LHS’s but now FAHS’s (Far away hobby shops). If everybody continuously buys stuff off the web theses LHS’s are going to close up.
Info is much easier to find too thanks to the internet. I’m a a member of a couple Yahoo groups about Conrail. Plus it’s now easy to find and buy models and equipment at any time of the day and anywhere.
When I first started in the hobby 16 years ago at the age of ten, I’d have looked at you like you were crazy if you would have told me that one day you’ll be able to find all kinds of info for free and buy model railroad equipment at 3 in the morning or from a hobby shop across the country.
So enough with all the “The Sky is Falling, the Hobby is dying” threads. If you’re worried about there are not enough younger mnembers in the hobby then get off your butt and promote the hobby. Buy your kids a trainset. If you don’t have kids buy one for “toys for tots”. Propose a model railroad club at your church or college.
I think the hobby is always trying to adapt to the next anticipated change desired by many of the modelers currently practising. As such, it is certainly getting better…perpetually. Fortunately, so am I.
I agree with you about the “Never had it so good” This forum alone has taken me leaps and bounds above the quality I used to model. If it weren’t for this forum, I’d still be stuck in the dark ages of kitbashing and scratch building.(not that those are bad things)[8D]
I want to Stop, Look and Listen at the good things and products that are available for us now. DCC and sound installed sound has made fun available for many more people than ever before.
To anyone who doesn’t think things are better than they used to be:
When I started modeling in scale, you couldn’t get an E8. Not even from EMD.
A box car kit contained some blocks of wood, lithographed paper sides, a mimeographed (ie. virtually illegible) instruction sheet and staples to use for grab irons. As for trucks, you had to get them elsewhere.
RTR meant American Flyer HO. A kit locomotive would almost certainly require drilling and tapping screw holes, not to mention soldering.
Pretty obviously, things have gotten steadily better. If anyone had told me, when the first rubber-band Athearn diesels came out, that a modeler would some day be able to buy a model diesel that duplicated every aspect of the prototype except the smell…
Come back in a decade or so and the manufacturers will probably figure out how to give us smell effects, too.
Don’t you people read? It’s very clear from that other thread that we’re all DOOMED. DOOMED I TELL YOU! [:o)]
But, actually… I agree. I find the hobby better now than at any time in the 30 years I’ve been in it so far. Better equipment, better technology, and whatever the usual cast of naysayers wants to say… Prices are as good or better (in real dollar terms) than in the past too.
Actually I think I read in the January 1995 issue of MR that somebody was selling some kind of oils for use in large scale locomotives that actually would smell like either diesel exhaust or the smoke and steam from various types of wood or coal being burned.
And thanks for the props canazar and trainfreek92.
Hey my pleasure[:D]. I want to thank you for brining up this thread cause it needed to be. Its seems for awhile so many threads have started off, Hobby is Dying, RTR is killing it Its so exspensive. blah blah blah
I have alot of old magazines, and bunches of stuff from my great uncle who was a huge modeler… I wonder what he would think of all this kit stuff and RTR. He migh think it robbed all the fun, until I showed him my little BLI SW7 switcher that has more sounds than I know how use. I am pretty sure he would be all over this current trend in our hobby and I would have had to bribe him to let go of the DCC controler.
Absolutely. If you’re in any doubt take a look at a magazine from a mere 10 years ago. Back then, we still had the ghastly pancake motors in most locos, Bachmann had yet to bring flywheel drives to the UK, DCC was a very expensive system used by a few people. You really do get more for your money now - the £40 loco of 2006 is light years ahead of the £40 loco of 1996.
There’s no question that the products and operating systems of today are far superior to those of say 20 years ago but really this is no surprise…it’s called progress. The products of 1987 were just as far advanced compared to those of 1967, etc. Really, very little in our hobby is out right new. Rather they are variations on former very high-end, extremely limited production items, that are now available for the mainstream hobbyist at far more reasonable prices than formerly. Superdetailed engines and rolling stock, sound systems, and multi-faceted operating systems, have all been available for decades…just they were out of reach of nearly all modelers because of price. Probably the only area in which things are truly new is in that of scenicking materials and structure kits.
One can expect to see the situation continue to improve as long as there is a viable customer base willing to pay for the improvements. Expect to see mass market trees and bushes that are totally realistic in both trunk and leaf detail, remotely operating couplers on every model, perhaps variable image LCD background panels, fully operating programable street and highway traffic systems, and many other hi-tech innovations over the next decade…it’s not miraculous, it’s progress.
I’d have to agree, and I am a realist (some would say cynic). The hobby offers more options to do more things than ever. Ever for me is 35 years in this hobby in one form or another. If I want a particular effect, function or look, it is probably available thanks to the advances in both products and techniques. Having options is a good thing. And this is true all the way down to how to construct a layout.
Being a realist, I am concerned about the initial cost of starting in the hobby, and what that does to enticing new people. I’m also concerned about what appears to be fewer younger people getting involved. However (a word defined as “disregard everything before this word”), this is probably a cyclic thing, as most are. Given the number of forum members that picked up or rekindled an interest in MRR as adults, perhaps that is the current cycle. As they share the interest with their children and grandchildren, the cycle may well change. Think about the variety of very useful skills a child can be taught…basic carpentry, basic electricity, art, basic electronics, basic mechanics and the all important skill of observation. And how about patience?
Some worry that hobby shops becoming fewer will signal the death of the hobby. I don’t think the two are necessarily in step. Caboose Hobbies (Denver), MB Klein (Baltimore) and a ton of stores in places I would never have heard of seem to be doing okay these days because they adapted their business models to a changing market. I’ve visited many of these places (I make it a point to visit LHS when I travel), and they are great places to spend a couple of hours and whatever money you have available. On a recent visit to Northern California I was pleased to see Just Trains in Concord had “moved to the next level.” She was a one person shop the last time I was there (now 2 person), but she reacted to the market and seems to doing well while preserving what made the store good in the first place.
Hi all
My answer to this is a resounding NO!!
While I apreaciate the quality and quantity of product avalable has
increased out of this world.
And some of the down right dangerouse ways and matierials are no longer
avalable or used.
The levels of modeling skills have I think declined you don’t see as many home made items on model railways as you once did because it is far too easy to go down to the store and buy it, and may take weeks to build it your self
from scratch
I think a lot of the old worth while skills are disapearing as are the modellers capable of teaching them.
The classic exsample I like to use to illistrate this is card coach construction.
Its not quite as simple as it sounds to produce a wonderfull panneld coach
But I have been priveledged to see a master do it.
You don’t see that method demonstrated at exhibitions any more and its amazing how strong the finished coach is.
regards John
I agree with almost everything said above. However it bothers me that an extroadinarily high percentage of nearly all HO products offered today are made in Communist China (which explains why they are so reasonably priced). This was not the case when i started in the hobby more than 50 years ago. The Chinese are NOT our friends and I suffer very mixed reactions when I buy a beautifully crafted product and turn it over and see “Made in China” on the underside.
Unfortunately, we now find ourselves in hobby that is contributing to our terrible trade deficit and helping a country that would declare war on us in a minute if they thought they could win. The most powerful force in model railroading, Wm K. Walthers, Inc. has almost completely sold its soul to the Chinese in exchange for PROFIT (and they obviously don’t give a hoot about the kind of world our young modelers will inherit when they grow up). What a shame we can’t produce more of what we want right here in America!