How do we keep the hobby going or should I say, keep it from dying? There are not a lot of younger people (the older I get the higher age limit for younger gets) into the hobby? [^o)]
I have been to a few “open houses”, swap meets, and train shows in my time. Is it my imagination or are most of the participants males at least 50 years or older? When I do see young adults with their children at these events, most “hosts” treat them like they are a bother. I have a 6 years old nephew who love trains. His parents take him to ever railroad related activity within 100 miles. He is well behaved and does not touch anything unless the adults give him permission. He does ask a lot of questions as children are prone to do. Unfortunately, he is often ignored. I see this with other young people with or without children. What is the matter with you people??[:(!] These are the folks who are interested enough in this great hobby to show up at events and some of you will not even talk with them or worse, act like you want them to go away!! We need more people in the hobby so that manufacturers will make more products and at an affordable price.
Lets try an encourage people and their children to join this great hobby!![:D]
Hopefully we are all going to reach 50 (or like me, already reached it). If that is the starting age, we’ll cultivate them. How do we get young folks into the hobby? Taking our children and grandchildren along to a show to expose them. Give them things to do when you are working on your layout (granddaughter helped with puff ball trees today) and let them run the trains once in awhile. Set up a layout where the younger folks can see it, especially around the holidays.
'taint going to be easy, but if we show folks what fun we are having, some will follow along.
Rules for hobbyists interacting with non-modelers.
be polite
be courtious
take a bath
brush your teeth
comb your hair
wear clean clothes (somewhat stylish is a plus)
don’t stand in the middle of the aisle and BS with your buddies, move to the side and out of the way so those of us that are actually looking to buy can.
if you are not the social type, that’s okay, just don’t talk to anyone.
If a man has an attractive lady with him, don’t oogle like you’ve been locked up for 10 years, get out of the basement and find your own lady. Pretty women are out there, but not in the local LHS or the club. [swg] Please follow 1-6 for assistance in the pursuit.
The local version of a national train show had hundreds of children there. We have a few women and some younger people in our division. There seems to be some hope.
My club has several junior members under 16 YO. They enjoy the hobby and are very knowledgeable. On the other hand we did a show at a Boy Scout event last spring celebrating 100 years of scouting. Those little B’s did everything they could to cause problems like shaking the layout, putting sweating soft drink cups on the rails in front of moving trains, causing derailments, throwing switches and many other things to disrupt the layouts operations, all while their scout leaders looked on. Never again for them.
You could encourage the major vendors to support the “Youth In Model Railroading” organization. The vendor’s seem willing to make one time donations of equipment or supplies, but no real on-going sponsorship to run and expand the organization.
VISUAL STIMULATION…Let me explain. We have a MR Club in my area. They had a city owned building for their club. They got booted for reasons unknown to me,based on the newspaper article I believe it was political. Anyway they ended up at one of our local malls. Their space has big store front windows,you can’t miss it. I went to visit it about 3 months after the move and one of the club members said they had a dramatic increase in membership because people found out what MR really is all about because they were exposed to the public instead of being in their private little clubhouse so to speak. Another episode was in spring of 2010, our guest/little bathroom toilet overflowed during the night and ruined the floors in the bedroom and my train room. The water clean-up crew came out to do their thing and I got one of the employees interested in MR by seeing my layout in progress. And I had a co-worker come by one day saw my train room because I left the door open and he got interested and is now building his own layout…VISUAL STIMULATION…everybody loves the miniature worlds.
Personally, I keep buying train stuff, and when the neighborhood kids are over playing with my kids, I’ll invite them to try running a train or planting some trees.
Well, ya i agree with all of you. I go to the LHS about twice a month (whenever my dad will take me) and i rarely see kids in there and when i do it is usually kids getting scenery stuff for school projects. When i was down at the San Diego Model Railroad Club this summer, i saw a fair amount of kids. The members there couldnt have been nicer. A man was going to get an ice cream but when i asked him a question he forgot the ice cream to help me, he then took us on a tour inside the layout and couldnt have been nicer. Thanks!
Attracting fresh blood to the hobby – of ANY age. There are not many enthusiastic train evangelists out there. The World’s Greatest Hobby ambassador program was a step in the right direction but it takes a certain personality type to really do a good job. The population you attract from is one challenge, but people to do the attracting is an even bigger issue. The LHS has a role to play but … they can only deal with those who come into the LHS of their own free will. Train shows and displays are great, but who follows up – who mingles with the crowd handing out literature?
Youth. Most of us are model railroaders because we retained a level of interest either from when we had toy trains, or from when we liked to build plastic models of cars or planes or monsters. Frankly I think every boy I knew as a kid liked to do one or the other, and often both. Result - a huge pool of people with potential interest and even some skills that could either carry over directly to model railroading, or could be readily reawakened after a few years off. Now if you want youth you have to create the interest from scratch and that is a totally different thing than retaining or converting interest. I think there are two and perhaps three generations of men who did not have trains or do much plastic model building as kids. They are an important (and large) potential target for converts.
Maintaining enthusiasm. I think this is the biggest challenge of all. I know so many model railroaders who do NOT go to NMRA meets or conventions, nor to train shows or displays, who claim to be modelers but never really progress on the layout, and who do not subscribe to any of the remaining magazines. I think there is a massive amount of train fatigue out there. Part of the problem (and I do not want to restart various thread
My 12 year old son is a 3rd generation MRR as well as Lifescout heading to Eagle and makes the better sports teams. I see several reasons why the younger generation is not as much attracted to a lot of things as I’ve been a coach and Scout leader for years.
Boys are by nature more inclined to learning with a hands on approach. I’ve seen this over and over again. Fully obstruct that inclination and the result won’t be positive for them.
Going to a more RTR vs kit approach takes away some of their ability to apply their natural inclinations as per 1 above. If you want boys interested, understand that they will want to touch and if you don’t want them touching the layout, give them a kit or something to do. That’s why for his last locomotive we had to pull together parts to make a kit. That does not build loyalty to a brand either.
Boys can be made/encouraged to behave, but it helps to have a parent who understands good behavior and how to make it happen. Unfortunately for me that has meant I’ve had to pick and chose my battles to the point that I regret not reaching out enough.
A lot more boys are a part of single parent homes and so while there is a big pull for many different opportunities to spend time while there is also an opposite pull with available parent time to help with those things. MRR requires more detailed instruction and supervision than say watching TV or playing video games. I know of several ladies, but MRR is more of a male activity and fathers are not able to see their children as much as they would like. And a lot of times it’s not just quality time, but quantity that is needed when you’re talking about building a hobby.
My son brings a few friends over to play trains (no they don’t use the schedules, they just pla
This is a very good point. I would add, that many of the publications and other “faces” of model railroading tend to tout the benefits of multiple operators, or the social aspect of the hobby. The problem is that most people who buy trains sets or get started in the hobby, do so with the intention of operating their trains by themselves. They do not think about buying trains with the idea that they are going to invite 2 or 3 friends over to run them. They don’t start off in the hobby for the social aspect of it. That comes later.
They may lose enthusiasm if they are bombared with the message that the hobby becomes truley fulfilling only when it is shared with others.
My take on the whole issue is that the hobby will die because everybody in the hobby will become so consumed with arguing whether or not it will die that no modeling will get done.
Not a good time to bring a locomotive kit to the market. [swg].
I mean, look at the DC/DCC threads, the cost of the hobby going up threads, companies not existing threads…sheeesh!
Ya just gotta go off, get yourself a beer and then sit down and try to drink that beer between fits of uncontrollable laughter. It’s a thankless task. Most of the beer doesn’t even make it anywhere near your stomach, but is instead expelled at high velocity through your nose.
Does DCC lead to a reduced libido?
Do hemorrhoids lead to building layouts at higher levels which make it less tempting (or practical) to sit down? Do hemorrhoids really have anything to do with it since it’s so hard for old geezers to stand up?
BTW, have you ordered your Gulfstream V yet? The only thing more lucrative than the model railroad market is selling ice cubes to the Inuit.
Man, the forum was boring during the holidays. You know what’s going on don’t you?
There are Kalmbach employees who masquerade as forum members, and when they see the hit count on the website decline, they ginnie-up the argumentative topics to present the new hit count to advertisers. You know, kind of like sweeps week. [;)]
