It may not be a cheap hobby, but think about how much an ATV, motorcycle, boat, PWC, snowmobile, etc. costs! You can easily sink $10K just getting started, and that’s all at once! Ther there’s the trailer, protective gear, expensive fuel, etc.
So maybe a layout isn’t really all that bad!
Bob Boudreau
Three months ago I started an N scale 8x3 layout, track, 5 locos, 10 box cars, 3 passanger cars total cost $2500AU which is about $3,000US, example 12 switches with switch motors cost $420AU or roughly $500US., expensive but worth every cent for the enjoyment it brings.
Well at $50/ sq foot. My layout would be costing me about $13K. At $100/sq ft. that is about $26,000. SO far I have personally spent $37.50 as I have recycled almost everything on my current layout from a previous layout. That was for wire mesh for scenery. Of course over time I have had quite a bit of stuff that has been traded in order to get what i need.
If you think MR is expensive, try R/C airplanes with with real turbine jet engines!
You can spend $3500 or more just for the engine. That does not take into account the plane, ground support equipment, radio, etc.
Many hobbies cost a lot more than model trains.
Don’t forget a hobby is just that. You do not have to have a hobby but most people do need a house, a car and food.
My last “hobby” was a lot more expensive. Over 4 years, I dropped over 7 grand in a 1969 Mustang. Not counting fuel (Cam2 Racing fuel) tags and insurance for a car that was not really a daily driver (10 mpg), then selling it for 2 grand,trains were almost an investment!!!
Geeze…must be nice to have a PLACE to put these layouts that are costing anywhere from $500 to $7000. Anyone care to add in the cost of either building a train room, or allocating one bedroom in your house to the trains? If you have an unfinshed garage,
like I do, you may consider insulation costs, sheetrock, heating, lighting, electrical hookups and the labor cost before you even GET to purchasing train stuff.
That’s the one reason why RR Clubs were created. Some of us just don’t want to or don’t have the space for an in-home layout. So I belong to a local club that has over 5 scale miles of double main line with two large freight yards and VERY large passenger yard, two helixes/ two levels and DCC control. For a small monthly cost, I get to play
two nights a week, help create or fix scenic issues, etc. I don’t get tired of the layout; don’t have the wife nagging at me to get my modeling stuff out of the spare room since her mother is coming over, etc. etc. {Gives me the excuse I need to get out of the house on Saturdays, too!!} Perhaps some day I’ll have my own layout…but for now, this works for me.
Forget the cost per square foot theory, thats only used by real estate salesmen trying to flog houses, it’s the most abused and unreliable system in estimating and any reliable contractor will not use it. Construction costs what it costs, 2 sheets of plywood, some 2x4’s, nails or screws, foam , and go ahead and build it, if you want to charge yourself $75.00/hour labor (or $100 per square foot) go ahead, NOW----the costs for all the track, switches, electrics, your 50 new locomotives and 300 cars and 78 new building kits, this is where the money is, not on the basic platform construction, you’re scaring off potential new train modellers.
$17.5k and counting! So what. How much did Howard Hughes leave behind??? answer – all of it. Use it and enjoy as long you don’t deprive your family.
Tom
Still the least expensive per hour of enjoyment of any hobby I have had. Compared to drag racing, this is practically free. 25K for 13 seconds, that is expensive and that was years ago. Now its like 100K for 5 seconds.
For less than $20.00 you can purchase a very good stamp album. Buy one!!!
My (first) wife about had a slobbering fit back in 1962 when I forked out about $12.00 for lumber (believe it or not my first sheet of 4X8 plywood cost me $2.86 - and that was BC - I couldn’t even steal it for that price these days a tank of gas costing more than John Glenn’s 1962 space flight), snap-track, and two switches. I did all my original carpentry with a hand saw. This hobby is not cheap but most of the initial shock is caused by the expense of getting started - once the original costs are absorbed things (can and will) slow down considerably.
Yep. Several thousand I think before I run one train.
Of course I could buy a loop of Kato Unitrack and run a train for economic reasons.
0Well lets see… If I go back to last October when I startedthe new room.
Painting and sealing basemewnt walls - $450
New Room - Materials and Labor - $1,100
Gas Heater for room - $1160
Paint $55
That’s $2765 and I haven’t even started benchwork. Probably a couple hundred for electrical stuff for the layout lighting. About $250 for wood and hardware for the benchwork. $400 for a Digitrax Radio Super Chief to upgrade fro the Super Empire builder… Many trips to the LHS for track, turnouts, scratchbuilding supplies, several new passeger cars, etc. Consider that I have dumped about $600 there since January.
So I’m well over $4000 on the hobby since last October when I started to build the new room and I have yet to run a train in the new space. Yep hobbies are expensive…
Sounds very cheap compared to doing it all in AU$… factor that everything costs 1.7 times Walthers catalogue price, not counting bargains on the same kind of base salaries and you could imagine why MRing isn’t that popular here. I would think I have spent well in excess of $5000…but dont tell anyone [;)] you never know who might be looking.
I would think that space cost is also an issue for us, we dont have a free basement, basements are a very foreign concept here, so there is a real cost to devoting any real space to MRing. In order to “replace” the space I have used, I will have to spend at least $10K…and I will have to replace it soon, the wife is getting upset when she can’t get into her car in the rain [:P]
Add the time factor (large chunks required to get anywhere fast) to the previous two and it isnt hard to see why people are not flocking into the hobby.
Yes, the cost of things do add up. Take this photo of my HO Siskiyou Line:
The total cost of what you see in this picture is probably around $1200.
The plastic locos each cost about $250 once you factor in all the extra details, paint, decals, decoders, lights, sound. Many of the trees I made by hand for a few dollars each, plus some of the superdetailed and super-realistic foreground trees are from Canyon Creek Scenics and I would guess there’s a good $200 worth of CCS trees in the scene. Then I figure there’s probably another $200 or more in track, ballast, plaster, ground foam, silflor grass, the scratchbuilt trestle, the backdrop, and the benchwork lumber.
If you consider the time investment this scene (scenery plus locos) represents, it’s probably about 3-4 months of spare time – or about a month’s effort if done full-time (8 hours a day).
It’s worth mentioning that the $1500 and the 160 hours were spread over a period of several years – so if you look at it that way, it’s almost lunch money level. It does build up over the years however – and I’ve been in the hobby for almost 40 years now. I’ve never priced my entire collection and layout, but I suspect it’s well over 10 grand – but spread that out over 15-40 years and it doesn’t look so bad at all – it’s probably somewhere around 100 bucks a month.
Compared to other hobbies (boating, for example – ever bought a nice boat lately?), that’s a drop in the bucket. It’s all a matter of where you want to invest your money and if you have the patience to work the hobby a little at a time. [swg]
Also, look at it this way… Real railroads had to do a lot of time, money, and labor investment before the first train could run. Some lines took months or years and hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars to build before the first train rolled through. Some lines were used for a shorter time than some of us have been in the hobby. So, in this sense, we are also simulating how the real RR’s do things.
Brad
Well I figure I have about $30K in my layout but then again I have been in the Hobby for 40 plus years and a member of a club for 20 plus. So divide the 30K into 40 years and that is about $750 a year. I know that I have wasted a lot more and have a lot less to show for it!
My latest layout is in a 2000 sq ft basement and is only 5 years old. So I have a lot left to spend!
The layout has 3000 feet of track and 305 turnouts plus 850 cars alone and I have at least 50 engines, so you do the math!
And this is cheap when compared to doing Car Shows!
BOB H – Clarion, PA
Surfstud - Indeed, you are on the right track in your estimation of expenditures to get a layout up and running. As several posters have indicated, if anything, you are still probably on the low side of typical. A modest-sized but quality-level layout runs perhaps $7500 and up, with anything reasonably large can be in the $15000+ range. Most of the layouts you see in the pages of MR far exceed such figures.
That’s not to say you can’t have a nice looking, fully operational pike for much less - many fellas do. Just don’t expect it to end up looking like the high-end magazine layouts!
CNJ831
the worst part about it is that we dummies will pay for the for the enjoyment of work our butts off only to be criticized by other dummies spending the same amount
Two points. When I was contracting, I often used the sq ft method, especially when giving a potential customer a rough guess as to costs. sq ft method can be pretty darned accurate once you know your building prices and when and where hidden costs are going to occur.
Second, when a newbee starts to design a layout and is serious about, they should understand that what they are building is not cheap and that a bad or poorly conceived plan is throwing good money on a plan that doesn’t do the job. Last time I checked, rolling stock, building kits, and scenery are all part of layout construction costs and need to be calculated. Using the construction analogy, that would be like telling a person the framing is all you need and letting them discover the plumbing, fixtures, and carpenting costs on their own.
I have torn down a layout to build the one I’m currntly doing. I was smart and kept/used the plywood, 2x4"s 1x4"s, and some foam from the previous layout. But two months ago I spent 150.00 in wood. Basically I bought other stuff at 1/2 off or where sale itemx. I still bought a lot of stuff normal priced. I do however think the layout if somewwhere in double digits of the thousands. With DCC, lighting, room prep, etc etc. so its typical to spend a lot when starting up.