I am mostly an HO operator but have a small O Guage layout with post war and newer Industrial Rail rolling stock. It is set up as a toy train layout. Back in the 1990’s when I first became interested in this end of the hobby, CTT and OGR had mostly articles on toy train layouts and very few high rail layouts covered. The advertisers were offering lots of post war collectables and not as much new stuff. Now it seems the oposite has happened. I rarely see toy train layouts with strictly post war rolling stock and no advertising of the same. Have most people switched to high rail? Are toy train layouts a thing of the past? It also seems that the local train shows don’t have as much post war and most of the dealers are now concentrating on the new. Has high rail replaced toy train?
Well, Bruce (nice name BTW), as a middle-of-the-road Toy Train/Hi-railer, I can tell you with some confidence that Toy Train layouts (and the collections that support them) still reign supreme. The Hi-Rail layouts are making major in-roads, but I would gauge it (PUN intended) at about 20-25% of the operators.
CTT has been spotlighting the HI-Rail end of the hobby, but I think that has to do with A) the Model Railroader pedigrees of some of the staff, and B) the new products that have bombarded the market.
Either way, 'tis a good time to be a part of the hobby.[8D]
Yep, that’s what has happened. For me, it’s unfortunate, as I’m most definitely a toy train operator/collector. I think even CTT has reduced the amount of toy train features in their magazine. I guess it’s a sign of the times.
To me it doesn’t make sense to have 3rail O move towards scale, when 2 rail O already exists. But like I said it’s already here. Layout plans have changed too. Pretty much gone are the more geometric loop layouts featuring tons of 031 curves, track , switches and accesories that are POstwar in flavor. Of course I purposely set out to create this kind of layout just to buck the trend [:D]
Yes, there was a time when postwar flew off train meet tables and new stuff just sat there. Vast improvements in quality, realism, price, and features are what made newly manufacutured scale trains as popular as they are today. I say price because the prices have not climbed with inflation since the early 90’s and the products are twice as good. A Lionel scale hudson for example, with crude Railsounds and no command control had a street price of $1200 in 1991. An SD-40 with nothing but a buzzer for a horn had a street price of $300.
It’s hard to say what the ratio is. Many of the new hi rail products are put in a toy enviroment as well as hi rail. This is why Lionel does everything the can to make their standard O equipment compatible with 031 layouts. There are a lot 3 rail operators out there who don’t subscribe to magazines, belong to any clubs, and they talk about their trains as much as they do their lawnmowers.
Would it be fair to say that most people are running a combination of post war and new equipment on their layouts and not restricting to all post war or all new modern?
I don’t think the answer to the question is as clear cut as one or the other. Granted, as John Long said, there are a good many operators out there looking for nicer more scale proportioned trains that run on the tubular O gauge 031 track they use. I’ve certainly met train operators that are not active posters on any of the train forums too.
Remember, as far as the magazines go, they exist to sell advertising, which ultimately pays the bills. From an editorial standpoint, they also want to cover new things and not just old news. Often when toy layouts are featured (such as the all-MARX layout in CTT) there’s as much positive feedback as negative. When the other magazine has done stories on holiday layouts, there’s often a lot of criticism like “why do waste valuable editorial space on things like that?”
But the reason is because there are a lot of diversified interests among today’s train buyers. For some it’s still a hobby, and for other’s it a complete obsession. The guy doing a layout with his kid probably doesn’t have time or the money to go to YORK twice a year, and write about trains every single day on a train forum.
No different from other special interest magazines either: the cars written about in the automotive magazines are not the same ones folks drive to work every day or to cart the kids around. And the beautiful luxurious homes featured in those sorts of magazines are probably a far cry from the homes of those actual magazine subscribers. Maybe that’s why the old postwar Lionel catalogs were often referred to as “wish books.”
As far as postwar, it still sells and there’s still demand for it. But the sales avenues have changed. Whereas you once had to travel to many shows to track down some items, now you can find them (and usually quite easily) while sitting in your underware at home on the computer. eBay and the other internet buy/sale boards and other auction sites, as well as all the on-line mailorder sites,
I am, if it I think it looks good, runs good, sounds good, and if the price is right, I’m either all over it or wishing it was mine. But, I usually lean towards the traditional sized equipment.[8D]
I’m a toy train guy. I have no idea what’s more popular, but there is a movement that favors traditional toy train layouts, whether it’s postwar-themed with Plasticville and similar buildings, or prewar. There’s probably no way to know which of us is the majority. I know the high-rail guys tend to be more vocal.
The toy train movement seems to be more like a guy who lives in St. Louis who I met a couple of years ago. He has a gorgeous prewar display layout using tinplate buildings from all over the world and very little in the way of modern products. He has a computer and he’s on eBay all the time. He reads a few Yahoo groups religiously and participates frequently. He’s familiar with the magazines on the market, reads them occasionally and speaks well of them, yet has never set foot on this forum. And he doesn’t seem to care what anyone else is doing, except for a small group of online friends with which he exchanges ideas.
“Toy Train” and “High Rail” are really variations on the same scale. It’s a continium from “toy train” - a Lionel Display layout from the 1950’s - to “high rail”- a truly scale layout except for the center third rail. Almost nobody is pure “toy train” or “high rail”. The “toy train” layout may have 072 curves and scale locomotives, while the “high rail” layout may have a 145 gateman.
That said, everyone is somewhere in the middle.
As far as what appears in the model railroad magazines, “high rail” layouts are more photogenic than “toy train” layouts.
perhaps I’m reading too hard but the gist of this thread asks the same question I have had recently. I used to subscribe to CTT but when I thought about re-suscribing I had to ask myself if the name of the magazine should be changed since it had less and less Classic Toy Trains in it. I have even been thinking about buying a new set but that doesn’t mean I want the venue for the Classics watered down with them. perhaps they should get their own magazine. kinda a melding of Classic Toy Trains and Model Railroader. if this happened I would definitely re-subscribe to CTT and who knows when I get my new set maybe the other one also. doesn’t one of the moderators here work for the magazine in question? hint, hint.[:D]
I think that modern scenery products have made it easier for people to make their layouts look more realistic than in years/decades past. It doesn’t take a craftsman or a master modeler to make a layout look nice anymore. I think train folks always wanted their layouts to look as good as possible. It’s just so much easier to do that today.
Put me down in the toy train column. I dealt with details for years in my past hobby. I purposely decided not to with our layout.
I don’t know from what toy train/high rail. If it looks good and it will look good on my layout and if I have the money I get it. I’m in it to have fun and enjoy myself and I’m having fun and enjoying myself. Gary
I started out to build a toy train layout, but somewhere along the line I started to buy more and more scale stuff. Right now I guess I am in transition. Running mostly scale stuff on an toy train layout. Maybe someday I will get around to puting in some scenary. Over time the log loader, operating milk car and stockyard have disapeared.
I may not be qualified to answer here as I have no home layout in any scale now. However from what I’ve seen here toy train layouts reign supreme. I plan on starting a layout in the near future with Lionel tubular track and all the post war accessories I can afford. I want a layout I can play with and care nothing about it being scale in operation or looks. I like the older oversized working signals with the oversize bulbs and the crossing signals that always flashed in sequence with the train wheels. I care nothing about train sounds or “rail sounds”. Give me an old Berk or Hudson with an air whistle tender and smoke and let me hear the sound of the wheels crossing track joints, a crossing or swithch and I’m happy. Like others have stated, even though the high rail scale layouts are featured in magazines, I think there are more toy train layouts out there that we never see or hear about. Also, I tend to count those that set their trains up on the floor, play with them, and pick them up when they’re done playing. This is just my opnion and thoughts. Ken
When the “High Railers” of today evolve into the rivet counters of HO, then we will have a new break-away group called “Real Toy Trainers” and we start all over again. Look at the O Scaler’s forum and you will see that the process of weeding out the inferior has indeed begun.
We are already hearing (in current articles) that certain trains shouldn’t appear on geographically correct layouts because that would be somehow a blow to the hobby.
I love a great looking layout, but my 4-year old nephew likes to sit in the middle of a carpet central for hours and build lego stuff while the train goes around him. What a dope. [:D]
Everyone faces the same problem that the magazine staff does - defining just what hi-rail means.
To some it just means layouts with nicer scenery - to others it expands to include just scale trains and structures and cities with grit - while others it is the whole rivet-counting-and-add-brass-detail-parts-to-match-the-real-thing thing.
I’ve posted this before - I once asked the godfather of hi-rail, Joe Lesser (jokingly) what he thought about my painting some genesis engines into a New York Central scheme. I thought I was being a smarty pants, but he thought about it for a minute and replied “If it were painted in a style that the New York Central would have painted a genesis engine, I don’t have a problem with it.”
So even his definition of hi-rail wasn’t as black and white as you might have thought.
The hobby has moved forward - just since I’ve been with the magazine postwar gear constituted the bulk of most people’s train fleet. Well, we’ve had 12 or 13 years of an orgy of train production and just about everything that could be built (selling more than three …) has just about been built, and purchased!
So the bulk of most people’s fleets today are newer cars and locomotives. That is pretty much where the audience is today.
Hey, BK, I enjoyed BRAD NELSON’s S-gauge layout every bit as much as the others in the MARCH issue [tup]. (and I don’t own one piece of Flyer) Just gotta keep the right “balance”…
