Let’s see, Since I’m returning to the hobby after a long stint and all old stuff seems lost in the wind along the way (Note: Never leave things with relatives for storage), I’m going to Have to to basically rebuy everything to get going.
Costs for the first year:
1 Train consist: roughly $350 (passenger consist, $200 engine, +)
1 DCC system roughly $250 (midrange average w/power supply)
Track for large area roughly $250 (around 5x20’ area)
Benchwork, roughly $300 (lumber, hardware, MDF board, Tools, ect)
Odd supplies, about $250
Total, around $1500, but thats for a relatively large area and a passenger train, cut cost bt half for a 4x8’ area and a frieght layout, looking at roughly $750 to enter the hobby reasonably decent.
Now you could get away without the DCC and buy an el-cheapo boxed trainset for around $50-100, but soon find you’ll have to spend more to just get the train to stop derailing all the time. Might as well buy a quality set right off the bat and save yourself the headache.
Hmm…maybe it’s the lack of decent cheap sets that’s detering the masses from joining the hobby. One person buys a cheap set for $80, 2 weeks later the thing’s crapped out on him and he gives up on it. Now if that cheap set lasted, say 6 months to a year, he might actually decide he likes the hobby and seek out better stuff.
But no one is going to spend $750 to start a hobby that they’re not sure they’re going to stay with unless they’re die-hards like us. Give them a decent starter set’s and let them be eased into the hobby.
Stuff costs more, yes. But I think we’re getting more for the extra. In the '70s, '80s (I’m old) If you wanted a smooth running accurately detailed, say, USRA Mikado, you’d buy a Mantua Loco, a Cary boiler, a ton of brass details, maybe a better motor, the paint… It could all add up costing more then than an Athearn Genesis mike now. Plus the time spent on it. And look at the variety now! Back then, the only Shays were brass.
And deisels? I just bought a Life Like Proto 2000 S1 from Train World for less than it would cost to buy the parts to upgrade and superdetail an Athearn to the degree the Proto’s have, RTR. Then I bought another! I do like and have some new Athearns which are better too, BTW, than their earlier counterparts.
The Quality of track is better. The quality and variety of nice buildings is better. Power supplies are better. Li’l vehicles are better. And variety in general? Look how much thicker a Walthers Catalog is than a few years ago. Like some people above have said, watch the sales, closeouts, Mail order places, etc. When you factor in inflation and the quality of what we’re getting (if you’re careful - read the reveiws in MR), I hafta say, buck fer buck, theres never been a better time to be a model RRer, price notwithstanding.
(I buy Mail-order, but also support my local hobby shop appreciably) Dan
I think the problem has more to do with cost of living and reduced disposable income.
I don’t necessarily disagree that the hobby has always been relatively expensive…I remember buying a used car in 1963 for less than a brass Akane articulated would have cost me…( I really wanted that B & O EM-1 though…), but I digress.
I don’t believe one single word of the US or Cdn governments’ endless nonsense about the supposed “cost-of-living-index”. The cost goes up beyond what they claim, and always has.
They leave out many of the key things which make up our cost of living…especially TAXES.
I do remember from 1959-1963, when I made about $1.00 an hour in various jobs, my take home pay for 44 hours a week averaged about $41.50 a week !
Only $2.50 a week was withholding taxes !
So less than 6% was tax.
I could buy at least a couple of Athearn $2.00 cars a month then.
How about personal transportation ? You could buy a DECENT used automobile , ( made of steel, not plastic), 8 or 10 years old, for $100 to $125 then…so three weeks’ clear wage would get you that vehicle. Anyone in a blue collar job buying transportation for 3 weeks pay any more out there ?
In short, our incomes have less ‘disposable’ dollars in terms of percentage of take home pay, and that is why hobbies and pastimes of all kinds are less affordable.
regards
Mike
Not really. It’s one of the cheapest from what I gather from observation. I see kids buying $2000 sound systems and $25,000 engines for their Hondas. I see men spending $25,000 for a new Harley, and $90 for a $35 Lifelike Harley Train set. I see RCers buy a $500 plane and crash it in the ground 1 week later. I seen a special on TLC or one of them channels about guys spending $10, 000 on a pumpkin chucker or mach 2 carbon fiber model rocket. I see old guys buying $125,000 RVs that get 6 mile per gallon at $1.50 so they can beat Holiday Inn out of $75 or Renyold’s Developing out of a $600 a month condo. Naw, $18 for a box car isn’t really out of line is it? Of course you don’t even have to spend that. You can get boxcar kits for under $5 and scratch build buildings out of cornflake boxes. I’m going to be real politically incorrect now and say the high price of RTR may be because they gave the Chineese Communist slaves a raise to 3 cents a day. If they paid them poor people a low wage in line with what we paid McDonalds or grocery sackers that $18 car would be $50. Of course that a painful subject that we need to ignore so we can feel good. FRED
I agree that this hobby has been expensive for a while now - and continues to get worse. As long as enough people are willing to pay the higher prices, they will continue to go up. I figure that this hobby has a high concentration of rich people that don’t care how much they spend on anything.
The best way to stay in (for those of us who are not rich) is to learn modeling skills - like scratchbuilding with everyday material that cost pennies on the dollar, or how to detail cheaper cars so they look (and run) like their higher priced cousins.
This is true. Comparatively to other popular hpbbies like Radio Controled models MRRing is definitey still cheaper.
When I was in the Navy I did RC Boats and a basic RTR boat ran me 300 dollars and that didnt include fuel or any of the things used to start the silly thing. By the time you included the DC starting Motor and the glow plug heater you already had a good 30 or 40 bucks more in to hobby.
Then thier was the motors that would run you a hundred dollars a pop ads well as the other parts. I must have spent a good 1500 a year on that hobby. Now I wish I had done trains instead.
THAT’S RIGHT!!! In fact the mean nasty me will say that just because you can afford to put RTR on a prebuilt benchwork frame, put down some easy track and decorate with groundfoam and premade trees don’t make you a Model Railroader no more than buying a new Harley Chopper makes you a Hell’s Angel. OUCH, I was kind of mean? I’m sorry if I offended anyone. MEAN FRED
The shame of it all is that Athearn is located in Compton - I’m very familiar with that area and spend time helping out with one of the local high schools. Many people are out of work in Compton, Watts, South Central LA. Those folks could use the jobs that Athearn is sending to China!
It’s not just in LA. The west had been in an economic war with the “third world” for many years. When you buy Chineese products you are supporting unemployment for us and funding the development of weapons of war for China. That’s my opinion and I also realize there is nothing I can really do about it because most consumer items I want like TV, computers, and trains come from China and/or their components come from China. One of the reasons I always purchased blue box was I knew they were made in usa. But Athearns in there graet wisdom have decided to farm them out too. If we all loose our jobs who will the companies sell too? FRED
Canada’s exchange is about .74 to the American Dollar. If I bought a $10- car in the states would cost about $13.00 in Canada. I could go into Canada for thier 10$ car and pay about $7.50 for it. Wonder why all our Seniors are buying meds across border.
I was looking over some MR’s from the late 60’s and see locomotives such as the AHM 2-8-8-2 Y6b for $90- If I am not mistaken wages were low in those days. Gasoline costs like .20 Milk .15, candy .05 A new car such as a Ford Mustang 3500- and a 4 bedroom house with basement about 23,000-
I never buy just released items with some very rare exceptions. I always wait out prices for a year or more. I recall the Allegheny from riverossi was about $650- a year and half ago and now costs half that. One of the reasons I have not bought one is that there are persistent complaints via the forums about the engine.
Ready to run to me is a bit expensive. Intermountains’ Reefers for the PFE were very expensive but I bought several because it was nice to have. At the recent train show I did not see a single current intermountain reefer for sale. I suspect that item will multiply 5-10 times in value in 20 years.
I recall a o scale Blue Comet set, in the early 90’s there were so many of those that the cars sold for 30- each and the locomotive at 350. Recently I saw a complete set for about 1600- Amazing.
Good Luck on your purchases, consider what your roster needs are and carefully select what you want. It is a Canon of railroading that there are items to be bought that are pricey but are desired.
Would those guys in Compton be willing to work for $5 and a loaf of bread a week or whatever those guys in china are being paid?
It seems to me that the free market capitalism that the west and the WTO is pushing on everyone is kicking us in the baws and it serves us right too!
if we don’t like the rules then we should’ve made the game fair. Lets be clear - it was us and through us, our governments that made this up so we could take advantage of other, smaller countries.
Yes, that’s part of the picture, and I’m sure I don’t have it all. If you buy items made with cheap labor you are in effect taking advantage of them. So we started purchasing items at low prices and felt smug with our voluntary enslaving of them to make items cheaper for us so we could have more. This goes on a few years and slowly companies move there to take advantage of low wages. Slowly the profit in the other country builds up and we loose our industrial base. Pretty soon we are at econmic war and the other country has raised their prices and start buying what’s left of our industries. Then our standard of living goes down. Can’t happen? It already did in the 1980’s-90s with Japan. I remember when Japeneese products were considered junk like Chineese is/was now. Now we are getting a rerun with China. So them guys in Compton may be working for a loaf of bread and $500 a week soon, but the $500 will be worth $5 in 1960’s dollars. FRED
I do like the point about scratchbuilding and kitbuilding. Why does Athearn have to offer a R-T-R line at all? Their kits have to be all of 8 pieces. The best thing to do is to look for bargains using all the resources available to us.
There are a number of articles in old mags that walk you step by step though scratchbuilding structures and cars. There was, before my time, a series of $1 model projects (1950s-1960s).
It would be interesting to see MR resurrect this concept and do a series of $5 model projects.
I’ve had to severely limit my spending in the hobby. So much nice stuff has come out in the past few years, but you can’t buy it all. I think that you have to really enjoy what you have and ONLY buy what you really, really want to have. Get very selective. Makes you appreciate your model rr a lot more. Plus save a few dollars for your car, repairs, clothes, food, dates, etc.
Yes, crazy expensive. And what the hell happened to “affordable” non-brass steam? Now stuffs gone mad. [:0] At the begining of this new wave, locomotives like the Spectrum 2-8-0 cost MSRP $135, Spectrum light 4-8-2 $170, Spectrum K-4 $140, and the Genesis light 2-8-2 $139. Those were the list prices and they could be found for much less. Even the prices of Proto’s earlier steamers look good compared to whats happening now. BLI T-1 $400, Lionel UP 4-6-6-4 $700, BLI 2-10-4 $380, BLI A class $500, Genesis 4-6-6-4 $600, BLI flat face 4-8-8-2 $500! They are sometimes discounted, but still expensive. Prices are gettin’ way too high. These prices are getting up to some brass. [V]
Like BLI making customers pay more for sound and DCC, some of us don’t want either. [:(!] That should be an option. Lionel and Athearn Genesis are follwing the trend, but not offering it as an extra. They should market some with DCC/Sound and some without. Bring the cost down for us who want that specific locomotive but don’t want to pay a small fortune.
Example. If BLI had runs of steamers that included ones with DCC/sound and ones not, the latter will be deemed more likely to be bought by people like me. Brings the price down to “reasonable”. [;)]
It’s no more expensive than most other activities. Compared with the price of going to a ballgame, seeing a movie, going to a bar, or eating out, model railroading is a cheap hobby. It can get expensive if you pay list prices for everything. With the availability of the discount on-line and mail order shops there is no reason to pay list prices on most items. A lot of RTR is costly but you can minimize the cost by building a kit, scratchbuilding, or purchasing the RTR item through a discount hobby supplier.
Plastic diesels start at around $100.and go up from there.
Freight cars run close to $30.,passenger cars close to $50.
This is a lot more than just a few years ago.[:(!]
Thanks for bringing this older discussion back as a reference for comparison to the other matching topic started today. It is always good to see past contribtions on current topics.
One thing; and this may be blasphemy to some; but if they painted some of these very detailed and accurate models in more roads, they could expand their market base and sell more, bringing the price down.
I know, that’s the reason we buy the detailed engines, for their road-specific things and such. But if an engine looks reasonably good in a paint sceme that never was, well then a railroader has a neat engine (see “Modeler’s Licence” for legal precedent), and the manuf. has a larger market.