I seem to see a lot of posts that start with “I’m new in the hobby” Is it my imagination or, are we getting more new hobbyist? Has the INTERNET made more people aware of the hobby? Could there be more retirees? It could be that in the IT age more people are using the forums.
It would be nice if more would take some time from their high speed slot cars and take a look back to the history that is portrayed in the rail hobbyist layouts.
Just some idle thoughts on a snow bound day.
[:-^]
Lee
I wonder if our hosts may have helped in some way. If the phehomenon is true, perhaps several forces have come together to make a bulge in the MR demographic.
Crandell
I’m fairly new to the forum not the hobby, signed up a few years ago, but just started posting in the last month or so when I had a question. Never got that answer on the UP horn however. Now that I’m writing this I’m thinking maybe I should post it in the Trains forum. I am surprised how few are online with the forum at any one time, like 100 or fewer. As I look now, I see 75.
The Baby Boomers are beginning to retire, so I suspect we may see some additions from that too.
Lee, it was called Christmas. I seen new people every year after the Holidays. Hopefully some will stay in the hobby after the novelty starts to ware off some.
Ken
I just saw a number (750,000?) of Baby-boomers that are turning 65 this year. So it could be a number of baby boomers are now retiring and seeking a new hobby.
I know the many of the train shows are setting new records for attendance. The National Train Show in Milwaukee, the IHobby Expo in Chicago, and Trainfest all set new records and I have heard of several East and West Coast shows doing well.
So it could be that there are multiple factors creating this new interest in our hobby. You could blame Thomas the Tank Engine for my return to model railroading.
What surprises and concerns me more, Lee, is not seeing evidence of far more newcomers, particularly at this time of year, so closely following Christmas. Seeing just the meager handful of newbies that we do making their presence known here is far from heartening to me. Quite honestly, in a country with a population of about 300 million and perhaps 200k to 250k hobbyists, we would probably need to see hello’s here from 100-200 newbies a month to suggest that our current numbers are even close to remaining static!
Incidentally, even in the case of the Baby Boomers, who indeed currently comprise the major part of the hobby’s practitioners, interest in model trains is/was mainly limited to those of them born before about 1955. Boys coming along after roughly that date were partial to the slot car craze in their youth, not model trains I’m afraid.
CNJ831
I was in a not-so-local hobby shop just this past Saturday, and was poking around looking for anything that might make its way home with me. I was struck by the amount of craft and RC stuff in the shop, and not as much of the model trains as there used to be. In fact, they had either acquired on consignment or from the distributor a lot of O guage stuff (maybe a boomer holdover there?), but little else besides what I have seen languishing on their shelves for six years now.
What was funny, as I noticed the change in ‘weighting’ of their sales over to RC cars and planes (who doesn’t want to fly an airplane?!!), was a guy came in and asked for gold panning equipment. She said, sure, right over here. [^o)] Word is getting out that a big new hobby is panning for gold in the steams around where I live.
If the community would rebuild the Comox Logging Company’s 2-6-2T, now under inside a roofed cage near City Hall, I’ll bet there’d suddenly be a huge boom in local modeling. As it is, there are a few train guys in the valley, but not clubs locally. The RC plane club is doing very well…meets in a field every second Saturday.
Crandell
This last 2 weeks has sprouted more new posters than usual for sure. Hopefully it results in new hobbiests.