I had a conversation with the owner of a well known model RR manufacturer
of finely crafted detail parts.
Being totally plugged-in to the industry, he stated that there are only about 10,000 , (more or less), serious participants, around the world, in the model RR hobby. The current state of society is to blame, I believe, because people
do not have the time and patience, to appreciate the great artistry and engineering feat of a top quality model RR layout. Maybe I am personally biased,
but this hobby has brought me some moments of satisfaction and happiness.
If you study the skill of a special effects expert, say like in “The Lord of the Rings” movies, you see the same skill and mentality there, as you see in
a realistic looking model RR layout.
What do you think would help promote this hobby, among the general society, and give it the recognition and appreciation that it rightfully deserves?
The only thing I can see that would change thing is a depression. When I was a kid growing up in the 50’s after world war two we made do. If a baseball had broken stichs you taped it up with electricians tape and used it some more. My son throws them away when they are dirty or have a single scuff mark on them. When my baseball bat broke my old man drilled a hole in it and put a wood screw in it. Disposable income is affecting every aspect of life today. We are also moving from a three class society with a middle class to a have or have not society. Now granted more people fall into the have category and have a lot more but the ony people building or detailing models are the ones that enjoy it. 50 years ago the money wasn’t there to do anything else. Just one person’s opinion.
As I see things it has come down to what is percieved as hip and trendy. If main stream media is not showing it or talking about it then it must not be good! Plus it appears to me that in order for todays youth to take part it has to be sexy in some way ( not all youth fall into this) for them to show interest. If Paris Hilton were building a Model Railroad man would that set off a boom of interest. I am only 33 yet hate how all the media focuses on whats percieved as beutiful or hip, Why must all of today idols be some sort of star or athlete. I prefer to idolize someone who works hard for a living and raises a good family and has a honest and decent hobby and life!
There is a local 2-bit excursion railroad that runs weekend excursion runs, and they do alright, but they hardly pack out the seats in their cars. The run is nice, starting at the Columbia River and climbing up through farmland and apple orchards, finally ending in a quiet burg at the base of Mt Hood. They don’t run during the winter because that’s the off season and no one wants to deal with the weather, etc.
Someone got the idea to extend their runs into December, go to daily runs, and to use their steamer. The height of folly, you say?
How about if I tell you they called these daily runs the “Polar Express” and you were to bring your kids in pajamas. They would serve hot chocolate, and even re-enact taking one kid “off the train” because they didn’t have a ticket. The train ran behind a steamer at night and went up into the snowy base of Mt. Hood.
One week after this train was announced, it was SOLD OUT throughout the entire month of December. ONE WEEK.
My opinion is the way to capture the hearts and minds of the next generation with model trains is fantasy railroading.
Model the Polar Express, the Hogwart Express, or Middle Earth trains (they appear later in Tolken’s timeline). Unfortunately, the hobby has gone the entire other direction into Prototype accuracy and as a result is quicky becoming an “old historian’s” hobby, which I believe will cause the ranks to continually shrink in the years ahead.
Fantasy railroading is not my cup of tea, but I believe that is the key to mass market appeal to the next generation.
jfugate,
I have take the ride you speck of. It had a switchback about a mile atter it left the station, then continued up the hill.
It stayed at the small town for about an hour or so (so the town could make some income) then head back down to Hood River, Oregon. It was the middle of summer when we went.
ennout
Joe, thanks for sharing the tale of the excursion RR. When most of us 40 somethings first got the Lionel (in my case Hornby) train set under the tree as kids, it was a fantasy toy for us as well. I believe that your thinking is spot on.
Thats whats wrong with the world right now, we are all guilty of it to, some may argue with on this to. Its fast paced and got to have it now. As far as the younger crowd in MR, times have changed. When I was a teen in the 1970’s, my father worked a full time job and we farmed 500 acres. So I did make some money and spent it moderately.
Since those times I have worked for years for what I have, just got my oldest daughter off to college a year ago. She about killed her mother and I money wise. I bought her first car which was about $3000, which she did not take care of at all. That was the first car and last one I bought for her. She had no idea of value and hard work, her mother and I are to blame for this. But now she does, she works 2 part time jobs, pays her own bills and takes care of things. It took mom and I joining together and shutting the money train off to get her to do thing right, allot of fights happened over this with the daughter, but it all panned out.
MR was tough when I was a kid, making buildings from cardboard and painting them, going to train shows, buying up old things to make something out of, combing the RR tracks for lumps of coal to smash up into coal loads. Time, money and interest have changed so much over the years. I have bought a few RTR loco’s and cars. But it just does not feel the same as building one.
I try and involve as many people in MR that are interested like the young crowd, it warms my heart to see them try and build something or ask allot of questions. Its hard to keep that part of MR alive when everyone wants it now with no getting your hand dirty.
I would argue with the 10,000 number. If you look at the economics, let’s say a Mom-and-Pop LHS needs to gross about $200,000 a year to survive. Let’s also say a “serious” model railroader spends $2,000 a year on the hobby. That’s a total of only 20 million dollars, which may sound like a lot, but it only supports 100 small LHS’s. There’s nothing left over for Intenet sales and train shows. The number has to be too small, unless the average expenditure is much higher than $2,000.
Still, the hobby isn’t as healthy as it once was. I think the problem may be the easy availability of other “wicked cool” toys and games, and the seemingly much shorter attention span that we all have, either because that’s the way we are now, or that’s the way we are forced to be to handle all of today’s interruptions. Even back in my teens (Kennedy and Johnson were in the White House) Model Railroading had to be an all-consuming passion, or I would never have gotten my layout built.
We did the Polar Express thing at Steamtown in Scranton for several years, until the copyright holder pulled the rights to it after the movie was announced. We substituted a locally written story and do the same excursion thing and they’re still packing them in.
You are right I am or was guilty of this i looked at ready made buildings and cars but after putting together several buildings and shake the box rail car kits I am hooked on doing it myself it is far more satisfing and I treat these models as if they were priceless heirlooms even if there only plastic and metal.
Joe’s story is interesting and the ride would be great fun but how many of those would have the time and patience to work on a model railroad. Some, probably.
I think today’s western culture is too fast-paced, gotta have it now, watch-the-video, downloaded-the-demo, movies-on-my-cell…
I get a lot of satisfaction with model railroading but I consider it fairly close to an arts-and-crafts hobby and I just don’t see today’s people with the patience to get into it.
My son is really into Thomas, I think that this could lead to a whole new crop of model railroaders. I bought him a thomas that he can run on my layout. He loves it. Thomas stuff is available at every toy store, and most department stores. Even Lego has gotten into Thomas. As all these young fans grow up they may take a sabatical from trains during their teen years but I’ll bet when they get older they will return to their trains like so many of us have with lionel.
Also don’t forget that in the 70’s when I was young the railroads where on decline. I wanted to be a train engineer as a kid but when I was old enough to enter the working world the Railroads were laying off. Now they are doing well and hireing. I think that this upturn in the real world will also extend into our world. The model railroad dept. of my local hobbytown just keeps getting bigger every year.
We could probably get into a social, economic and political discussion over this topic and I don’t know how many people here would want to do that.
I can say one thing for certain, I believe that Model RR’ng, is rooted in a “Family” type set of values. Those who value family and home, would be
more inclined to get into this hobby or craft.
The family is the basic building block of society, and “home” or the sense of home is fundamental to getting into Model RRng.
Of course you obviously must have an interest in trains, but that could be developed over time, even if you were not into trains.
This hobby also offers a chance to build a 3D creation of some landscape or scene that appeals to you.
Then again there is something visceral and undefined about building a layout.
We did the Polar Express thing at Steamtown in Scranton for several years, until the copyright holder pulled the rights to it after the movie was announced. We substituted a locally written story and do the same excurs
I wonder what constitutes a “serious participant”? The amount of money spent? The time spent? Length of time in the hobby? Willingness to pay msrp? 10,000 worldwide seems very low to me.
The numbers in the U.S. are usually some where between 100,000 and 250,000 depending on who is included. Given the large number of products on the market there must be a lot more than 10,000 folks buying on a regular basis.
As for new members, I think you have train shows, set up display layouts in the malls, etc. But we need to recognize that this never has been more than a niche hobby. Given what appears to be an overall craft hobby decline, I think that the hobby has plateaued and may decline a little bit. I don’t think it will disappear though.
Although it gives me no great pleasure to say it, I tend to think that JohnLat’s friend is probably correct - that there are only about 10,000 really serious participants in the hobby today. If one stops to think a moment, despite the “supposed” 200K subscribers to this forum, just how many outstanding layouts, built by serious craftsmen, have we actually seen here or might we even infer? Certainly the known figure is less than 100 and one might speculate that its upper limits of those “unknown” to us probably does’t exceed 1,000 (ten times the known quantity) . How many times larger than this forum can you assume total hobby participation in the States might be - 3, 4, 5 times greater? You can see how limited the figures become. We have seen some wild guesstimates of many hundreds of thousands to over a million hobbyists by posters here but, unless this includes a vast fringe element who do little or nothing in the way of modeling, it can not possibly be true.
I would suspect that little can be done to successfully promote our hobby in today’s general society. Interest in model trains is typically generated by exposure during a
If model railroading is to survive and flori***hen we need to get the kids interested. The problem is that there are so many other things competeing for their attention.
The situation is neither time nor money, and it is not "instant gratification ". People today are not learning any “mechanical skills”. I have neighborhood teens that can’t even fix a flat on their bikes.
When I was in high school, we had a full sized drag strip and a 3/8 circle track, both of which thrived. Today they are both gone, because nobody is building hot rods any more. We used to have plenty of kids with souped up cars. Sure they sometimes got in trouble, but they could tear them apart and put them back together. When I was a kid, we built our own skateboards before there was such a thing. Some of us had forts or tree houses. Most dog houses were home made. Today they are plastic igloos.
When I was molding for a model manufacturer, the people that came in had no tools, no knowledge and no skills. Hanging molds is not rocket science (yes there are some technical things) but it was difficult to find a youngster that knew what kind of tool did what…
Lots of trades now days have a hard time finding good people to start. There are plenty of people looking for work, but many have no idea how to do the job they are applying for. Almost any skill using your hands is pretty much completely lost from young people today, and these are exactly the skills for a model railroader.