Overall HO is the most popular model railroad scale. But are there variations in scale popularity by region of the country?
ive noticed when I sell N Scale stuff on auction sites it usually goes to Florida or California, two places where basments are rarely constructed. When I lived in New York and worked train shows there, most of what was being sold was O gauge Hi Rail. What do you guys think?
Ive always thought 3 rail O gauge was more popular in Pennsylvania but thats only based on thingd I have heard and read. They have the huge Train Collectors Association York meet there, something people trave to from all over the United States.
I’m not sure that HO is more popular than O gauge. The surveys I’ve seen (not recently unfortunately) were just for scale modeling.
I suspect that California and Florida being 2 of the most populated states would have higher sales of any scale. The few hobby shops I have visited in southern Florida seem to have as much or more O gauge than HO scale - of course O gauge being bigger, it may not be more pieces.
What I’ve mostly noticed is that certain areas of the country have more modelers than others. There seems to be a belt of popularity from Boston thru NJ, Pennsylvania, the midwest out to St Louis and Wisconsin. With California, Florida, and maybe Colorado having a goodly number of model railroaders.
But I’m not sure how much regional variation there is. Even without basements you can run O gauge in a spare bedroom pretty easily due to the tighter curves.
Paul
I do G and I can say that based on where the large scale stores are (or were) and where most of the postings on online forums originates, California is very big, then areas like Chicago area and midwest surroundings, NY state area, then Boston area northeast US, and then the southeast US and the southwest states like Arizona, Texas, and finally Florida. I suspect the general trend of distribution of other scales isnt too much different. Not to many G folks in Mississippi or Alabama, guess its just too darn humid.
I feel washington is a state that is heavily populated by N scalers, the west coast in general is a big N scale place.
I agree that the West Coast is the most N-centric area in the u-Nited states, for the following reasons:
Two of the most influential N-scale manufacturers - Micro-Trains and BLMA - are West Coast based. DeLuxe Innovations started out in California. Also home to Athearn, which ventured into N in 2000.
West Coast rail landmarks like Tehachapi Loop, Cajon Pass, Feather River Canyon and the evergreen forests of the Pacific Northwest are best modeled in N scale.
Just across the sea from Japan, where N is king.
N scale bastions on the West Coast: Los Angeles/So Cal, SF/Bay Area, Portland, Seattle/Tacoma
N-Trak was born here!
Southern California has the most modular N scale clubs anywhere.
Influential N scale layouts: Belmont Shore RR and East Valley Lines (Los Angeles); Columbia River N-Trak Club (Portland)
You can also open it up to west of the Mississippi; N is also popular in Colorado (also home to Intermountain and Red Caboose), New Mexico and Utah (Home of ExactRail).
HO is most popular in Southwestern PA (Gibsonia,Mid Mon Valley Model railroad Club, multiple home layouts), O scale is second (Carnagie science center, O scalers, etc) with some scattered N and Narrow gauge.
NMRA menbership is highest in the Northeast and Mid Atlantic regions, suggesting that both HO and two rail O gauge may have a special strong hold there. Of course these are both densely populated areas and areas where basements are common.
The Ohio Valley and upper Mid West seems to be next in line regarding HO - also an area with a lot of basements…
Here in northern Maryland, not only are there a lot of modelers, layout sizes tend to be fairly large, commonly filling most of the typical 1200 to 1800 sq foot basements common to single homes in these region.
High Rail O gauge saw a big return to popularity in the 1990’s, and while sales of that stuff seem to have slowed, I suspect the number of people active with it remains fairly high.
The big train shows in this region are clearly dominated by HO, followed by the highrail crowd, N scale is a distant third around here.
Sheldon
A vendor at a Train Show recently told me that Pennsylvania has more model railroad hobby shops than any other state. Also, growing up in the northeast, it seemed like most basement layouts were “O” gauge even though “HO” scale was booming during that era.
Doesn’t MR do an annual survey any more? They used to that did geographic and scale breakdowns.
That’s about the way it has been around here in central Alabama, except the O & S gaugers are only slightly ahead of the N scalers.
Here in my area in North Carolina HO is on top and N scale and the Lionel stuff about the same.