A lot of people are lamenting the bad economy and constant decline in our hobby, but consider the following:
The #1 movie in America is about a train. No not just a few scenes here and there, the movie pretty much features the train for much of the film. And though it’s a fictionalized railroad, railfans are doing their trainspotting in the theatres.
With body scanning and more invasive TSA frisking at our nation’s airports, people are seriously considering doing more travel by train for the Holiday travel season.
High speed rail is actively being planned in many states. The California high speed rail network, for example, may break ground next year.
You all see something here? Trains are “In” at the moment! Consider getting that youngster a model railroad; 20-30 years from now we’ll still still have an active hobby industry.
Wealthy investor Warren Buffet also bought BNSF as his “real train set”, and many follow his Berkshire Hathaway Company and his investment strategy.
Though, A movie about a runaway train may not exactly instill confidence in people wanting to go flying down rails at high rates of speed. It could have a negative impact.
Though, as travel by train increases so will the pat-downs and body scans for those who would be passengers on trains as well. Blowing up a train is nothing new-look at Spain a few years back by al quaeda and other instances.
Though, high speed rail still has a long way to go before it becomes an efficient and affordable or cheap method of mass transit of choice.
Though, Real 1:1 train “love” does not always translate into love of a train hobby. Thomas the tank engine has done wonders in the wooden train, the metal pushalong train and the Bachmann electric train sets to get youngsters interested in trains.
Though, as many of here on the forum can attest to, we often have trains as children, then take a break while college, careers, family gets in the way until we “find the hobby again” later in life. So the 20-30 year span may be acurate, but it could lag a great deal or {gasp} be phased out in the mean time if there is not enough interest as the boomers get older and die off. 30 years from now I will be nearly for 80. My eyes may not be as good aas they are now, my dexterity may leave something to be desired. I may loose interest in the hobby. And A Lot of good a resurgeance of the hobby then may do me. By then, they may no longer make much good old ALco or Baldwin steamers in favor of all these bullet trains, which frankly to me all look alike. But some can say the same about steamers or certain diesels.
Not being pessimistic, just realistic, or perhaps playing Devil’s advocate.
You could be right, there may be a greater interest in the hobby. All because of a movie.
Theres a point: Amtrak security will have to increase if they inheirti more of the airline traffic. On the other hand, while blowing upa train can be extremly hazardous, they still cannot pick just any target like a plane can.
Amtrak has a true random search gioing, we might see it more often. By random, it’s some guy tells corporate he’s going to show up at X station, then walks in the station’s door with a portable scanner and drops it at the entrance to one of the platforms. Then, he leaves when his shift is up, and takes the scaner with him.
I’m quite sure terrorists (foreign and domestic alike - remember OKC and the Atlanta Olympic bombing were domestic terrorist acts) don’t care about what’s hazardous, they just want to harm the maximum amount of people they can. For the foreseeable future, intercity rail travel is not an attractive terrorist target. Don’t expect airport-like patdowns at train stations unless there is a credible threat to the rail system, which is so expanse, from a terrorist’s point of view is not really worth it.
Still on the off-topic, terrorists want to garner the maximum possible exposure/public notice of their acts. Since they can’t steer a train into the Pentagon or LA City Hall, on-train events won’t blow up front-page headlines and lots of air time world-wide. And patting down passengers won’t prevent somebody from planting (details of attack deliberately omitted) somewhere along the right-of-way. Kind of hard to pat down every pickup-driver who ever crosses a grade crossing or drives through an underpass.
Back to the original topic. The best way to up the momentum is to try to interest as many youngsters as possible in the adult-level hobby, then try to convince the parents to get involved. My own twig was bent early, by a pre-WWII layout owned by a neighbor that featured a Varney Dockside and freight cars that looked real. (I was still short of my fifth birthday.) My parents never got involved - and my o
It’s a MOVIE, It’s a MOVIE ! ! it is only a movie. Not a massive economic or social program.
In order to avoid plane travel and take the train, there has to be passenger trains, the existing passenger system does not warrent much in choice.
High speed rail is non-existant and seems so in the future, you will be lucky to see any amount of high speed long distant travel in 10 or 20 years. Notice the word 'MAY" in the California hi-speed proposal. Aircraft are getting larger(not necessarily faster) and it takes people to fill them, and there is the infatuation in North America with the automobile.
The trend today is to see a gradual decline in the MR hobby, just count the number of young people who would even consider this a hobby, try to get them interested in anything other than their cel phones.
Other than the above statements , life just goes on.
That is not accurate. What they want is to make you afraid. Hence the term “Terrorist” (Terror). Killing a bunch of people is just a good way to do that, and they don’t even have to do it very often.
Guess what. It’s working, just read all the posts about TSA.
Yup, trains are getting hot, but only in the political discussion. I don´t think I will live to see a high speed train (in excess of 200 mph) running from New York to Chicago or to San Francisco, and I am only 54.
I ride the Coast Starlight from Van Nuys CA to Portland OR each Christmas. If it’s early at a scheduled stop it waits until its depart time. It was already full enough last May that the price had gone up to the next level. When I was very young I remember gaeseing longling at a Varney Docksider in a hobby store window. I had no connection to model railroading but even then I knew this was for me someday.
Train show this weekend! And, in 2 weeks there’s another one. I’m on the e-mail list for both events. While I know about them long before the e-mails come out, I forward the announcements on to a few friends and co-workers whose kids are interested in trains.
Last night, I was part of a program on local model railroaders on our town’s cable TV station. It was just the studio part of the recording process. Tomorrow, the cameraman comes out to do my layout, and then they’ll put the show together and show it. So, everyone in town will have a chance to see me (not very exciting) and my layout (hopefully more exciting) in addition to two other guys and their layouts.
And when I’m richer and more famous than the Beatles and Denzel Washington combined, I’ll buy the BNSF from Warren Buffett and break it up into the legacy railroads. And I’ll buy steam engines to run on it, too.
Let’s talk about this younger generation a little bit. They have all this hi-tech media that keeps their constant attention, almost to a point of over stimulation. And when it comes to a hobby that clearly does not have an instant satisfaction, I just don’t see them being interested.
It’s really concerning when every time you see kids, teenagers, young adults all buried into their cell phones to the point where they don’t even bother to look up and acknowledge the world around them.
It’s a strange new world, when you have to pass a law to prevent young people from texting while driving. It’s crazy.[:^)]
Consider an extension of the current trend: airline passengers will be forced to strip naked and submit to body pat down and cavity searches; this may become standard for train travel too. The result will be more private auto travel. Perhaps some company will bring out miniature figures of TSA guards searching train passengers; won’t that be a hoot? Anyone for a resurgence of slot cars? Remember when some pundit predicted the demise of model railroading in favor of slot cars? Well, we are still here, and you have a difficult search to find a slot car track. Changing times are certainly interesting.
Long auto travel will be more or less be extinguished in a not so far future. Mostly due to very high fuel prices and environmental taxes (just wait for it…).
And I think that the PR that this movie gives trains in general will benefit maybe not the train travelling, but just the way trains need to be embedded in the minds of kids!
Good point regarding TSA. Forgive me if this morbid but it seems that so many people have forgotten the horrible tragedy in Spain on “4/11” a few years back when several commuter trains were attacked almost simultaneously. I plan on traveling by train in the f
Sure, it’s not for everybody, but there’s a lot of us out here. I’m waiting to hear back from the editor of a publication I can’t name (because it’s not MR) about an article I wrote about teens in the hobby.
As to instant gratification…I’ve been working on my layout for 6 years now and only now starting to consider starting over to remedy some crucial design flaws.
Oh I don’t doubt that there are some teenagers in the hobby, and they,(including you), seem to enjoy it and have built quality layouts. What I’m saying is, without the cell phones and video games there would probably be a lot more in the hobby.
Yeah, just look at the impact that was caused by that airplane movie: “Snakes on a Plane”. Now people are very cautious about flying. And they stop everybody who wants to fly and search their bags, their luggage and even down their pants looking for snakes. You really do have to be careful what you show people at the movies these days.