When did model railroading reach a point that it was an established hobby ?.
Tracklayer
Last Tuesday at 2:20PM EST.
Long before most of us were even thought of as it was strong hobby back in the 40 as my father told me he was init before him and mom got married in 46 . I’m into O gauge my oldest set is from 1931 and lionel has been around scince 1900 and you had companies like bing and a few others in the 20’s I believe so theres a little history for you and if your thinking as HO well I believe it came around in mid to late 50’s and n scale was somewhere around 1970 I believe.
RT
What is “really popular” to you? I hate to say but this is not that popular a hobby. Walk into any Hobbytown USA and see how many people are there for the RC cars vs the model trains. Of course that just may be a local thing but, model railroading is not the huge thing it was in Lionel’s heyday when EVERY kid wanted one. Admittely it is gaining some steam again as the Baby Boomers from that age are retiring and now have more time and money on their hands. More than likely, as the baby boomers start to thin out the hobby will lose much of it’s steam and be in great danger of being profitable for the high end model makers of today’s age.
Actually it was last Tuesday at 2:23:34 PM EST according to the US Naval Observatory in Washington ( http://www.usno.navy.mil/ ). Bob’s watch is just a tad slow.[:D]
Andre
According to an article from the October 2001 issue of Model Retailer magazine by Mark Savage, model railroading accounts for 41% of hobby sales, R/C is 24%, plastic models are at 17%, die cast and slot cars are at 6% each, and dollhouses are at 4% with 2% other. The article did state that R/C sales were growing the fastest, but as of 2001, model trains were still king.
Hobbytown USA is probably a poor example to use for trains verses R/C. I’ve never been impressed with the train selection at any Hobbytown USA store I’ve been to and generally found other better shops to go to, even though the Hobbytown USA store happened to be the closest to me at two different places I’ve lived.
In the metropolitan area of Grand Rapids, Michigan, (were I grew up) there are five hobby shops. Three are all inclusive. One is exclusively trains and one small brand new on appears to be all R/C. (It was closed when I was home for Christmas, so I could only peak through the window.) A quick look at the Twin Cities (were I live now) yellow pages shows 4 R/C hobby shops, 4 train shops, and 5 general hobby shops. (One of the general hobby shops has everything but R/C and has the biggest train selection of any hobby shop I’ve ever visited.) There are also three other train only hobby shops I am aware of that are not in the yellow pages. These examples show that things are somewhat even between R/C and trains, but I would still give the edge to trains.
To more directly answer your question, Tracklayer, scale O-gauge trains were growing rapidly in popularity in the late 1930’s but HO was coming on even faster. However, in the period before WWII model railroading was still a rather limited, craftsman’s hobby, regardless of scale. Even as late at 1944 (when MR encompassed readers who were into O, OO, HO, and Hi-rail) their circulation was only a scant 16,000 readers.
Immediately after the war, however, as the manufacturers got back into producing large numbers of simpler loco kits, car kits, and other basic model railroad items, the hobby exploded. MR listed its number of subscribers as already 60,000 by 1948 and around 85,000 ten years later. During this same period interest in both Lionel and Flyer also peaked. An MR editorial in the mid 1950’s indicated that model railroading ranked as America’s #2 adult hobby. And during this same period 1 in 5 teens also was seriously interested in scale model trains (and even more were into tinplate).
So, considering the above, the immediate post war period would be the time when model railroading truly became an established adult hobby.
CNJ831
That’s the kind of information I like to hear. Model railroader mopping the floor with the rest of the others.[:D]
GO MODEL RAILROADING!
Which makes me wonder why I know so little model railroaders as actual people, and not just over the Internet…
what is recognised as the first commercially available “model” train was manufactured by the Bing Company in Nuremburg Germany in 1874.
Lionel Trains opened its doors for business in 1900
and the National model Railroad Association was formed in 1933.
The first issiue of Model Railroader is January 1934.
Hope this helps.
James
A hobby?? you mean this is a hobby?? Stamp collecting is the #1 hobby in the world, I don’t know how popular MR is in Peru? or Sicily? or Baffin Island, I guess it is really an established hobby but by far being the most popular hobby.
HobbyTown SUCKS. Period.
You could quote different dates depending on sales and interest, but the hobby started way back around the turn of the century when Lionel first started making model trains. It probably really became a hobby when both Lionel and American Flyer produced many different models affordable for the average person in the forties and fifties. Most of the commericial brass for HO started somewhere in the fifties also and by the late fifties and early sixties, you could purchase many brass models for various railroads, but accurate plastic models were scare with good detail.
Most of the hobby shops in the fifies era were not like today as most of the plastic was kits and very few RTR trains were available with any good detail. When I switched to HO scale in 1968, the hobby was in full swing for sure, but has really taken on a new life in the past fifteen years or so with Kato, Atlas and the Proto series, along with so many great models of freight and passenger cars
It is my thought we have yet to see the detail and quality that is to come in the next few years along with sound that will sound like the prototype, and not just noise in general.
I think MR started back in the thirties also and it must have been an established hobby to have a magazine like MR.
The one here in Indianapolis on East 82nd Street by the Castleton Mall is pretty good. Their train dept. and scratchbuilding supplies dept. cover about a 1/4 of the store, and it’s a big store. They obviously know where their bread and butter is at.
It probably reached it’s current popularity levels in the 50’s as a percentage of the population.
Enjoy
Paul
A bit of trivia…
The first model train ever made. Owned by John Pease 1825.
It now resides in a British Museum.
