Just ran through some old MR mags, in Dec.,1987 there was 218 pages, the rest for the year averaged @ 150 pages, does that give some hint as to the present state of the hobby? Maybe all the guys in the 70 and 80’s bought up everything, by the amount of ads and manufacturers I would say times must have been pretty good, big selection and making big bucks. I know, I know, everyone worked really hard and saved ALL their money and kids today are just whiners. Well, go out today and buy a house or try and get any kind of a job that pays over minimum wage.
One thing i noticed was the amount of adds in the mags. Back then before the internet took hold mags were the best advertising method. Now some companies stoped advertising on mags and only advertise on the web now.
The mags back then also had alot of kitbashing articles. most of the kitbashed products are availible today straight from the manufacture.
Then, as now, Model Railroader and other magazines only reached a fraction of the model railroading community. But, MR was probably the most effective advertising medium available. Now, a small company can use web sites, e-mail and other methods to target their audience much more effectively. I deal with several small manufacturers who don’t advertise in MR, and don’t distribute through Walthers, either. Instead, they maintain a good web presence and sell directly to the consumer. It’s a business model that just didn’t exist back in The Wonder Years.
Magazines need advertising and when it goes down, they reduce the size of the magazine, raise the price, or some combination of the two. Ads today are smaller and tell you to go to the website. That means less ad revenue for the magazine. A number of magazines have gone out of business lately. It’s not just model railroading either, PC magazines have shrunk drastically. Others as well.
Marketing/selling is changing and is more web based now. There’s a lot of information on the web as well. So you don’t have to buy magazines to get information.
Currently, the hobby seems healthy although the economic woes have probably hurt sales. Probably some number of hobbyists have suspended or curtailed purchases.
Enjoy
Paul
Back in 1987 model railroading was rapidly approaching its second great peak of interest among Americans (the first and most important one had occurred during the 1950’s) as many middle-aged Baby Boomers who recalled the Lionel/Flyer roots of their youth came back to the hobby. The largest MRs by page count would occur in the early 1990’s when issues sometimes included as much as 150 pages of actual modeling content. Contrary to what some may claim, the ads to editorial content back then was essentially the same as it is today, so the magazines weren’t top heavy with ads in the past any more than they are now. As model railroading was far more “hands on” back in the 80’s and the hobby healthier overall, the number of advertisers was considerably larger than today and with the Internet still not a widely used for selling, the ads themselves were much bigger, often covering several pages. The financial support from ads governed the amount of editorial content, so as advertisers either vanished altogether, or moved to the Internet, the magazines shrank.
The relative cost of being in the hobby was distinctly lower 20 years ago, even after today’s prices have been adjusted for inflation. There was also a great deal more impulse buying of items by hobbyists in the decades preceding 2000. That aspect has largely evaporated with the demise of the LHS. There has also been an obvious decline in the number of big name mainstream manufacturers. What has to a degree replaced them has been the rise of smaller, more-or-less cottage industry, manufacturers that cater mostly to the remaining old school, built-the-model-yourself modelers by offering elaborated, laser-cut, wood or resin kits.
With regard to subject matter in the magazines being less and less, it’s certainly not as simple as a case of everything having been talked about already (new subject matter consistently appeared for 7 decades in MR) but rather th
Keep in mind too that between the Great Depression of the 1930’s and today, the country’s worst recession was the 1982-83 recession. Unemployment was over 10% and we actually had deflation for the first time since the 1930’s. By the later eighties the economy was doing much better (in part - oddly enough - thanks to Iran and Iraq selling oil at below market value to get money to kill each other with) and there was a certain amount of pent up demand. People finally had some money coming in to spend!!
You know, I don’t fit the pattern I guess, but my dad bought me my first Lionel O gauge for Christmas when I was six months old. True, he was a railroader by profession, and true, he had waited for a boy child, and when he got one he went crazy, but, I never left the hobby after I was 6 months old. Dad and I built an outside third rail O gauge system in the attic. When I left for college, I bought HO and had a small layout in my dorm room all through seminary. When I graduated and was called to my first church, I moved from Oklahoma to Kansas with the layout (without scenery) strapped to the top of my old Dodge club coupe. I have never been without a working layout since then.
I agree that the hobby has taken a turn I don’t care for, but so has politics, the business
I just have to luagh at the guys at the LHS who constantly want something for little or nothing. Some want a more or less ‘instant’ layout knowing full well there’s no such thing while others want DCC and sound for under $70. Maybe someday but I don’t see that coming anytime soon.
It’s interesting to read through old copies of Model Railroader and see just how many manufacturers and hobby shops there were back then that no longer exist. Times change. Manufacturers and hobby shops come and go all the time.
Members of our local club sometimes reminisce about the good old days when you could buy a box car kit for 25 cents. They seem to have forgotten, however, just what you got for your 25 cents – printed cardboard or paper sides that had to be glued over a block of wood. No trucks or couplers. And 25 cents was probably a week’s income from their paper route.
It’s also fun to note the number of, ‘survivors,’ who, having stumbled and bumbled through the Transition era (“Steam is going away, so nobody will want to model railroads!”) the slot-car era (“Slot cars are IN! Model railroading is dead,” Aurora rep at a hobby show in 1960.) and all the other interest and financial hicups since, still advertise in MR. Of course, some that used to take full pages now use three column-inches to say, “Come visit us at our website, HereWeAre.com.”
As for me, I’m even more amazed how many of the little storefront shop/manufacturers I patronized in Japan half a century ago still advertise in Tetsudo Mokei Shumi.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
With regard to subject matter in the magazines being less and less, it’s certainly not as simple as a case of everything having been talked about already (new subject matter consistently appeared for 7 decades in MR) but rather that, in large part, many of the newer hobbyists now buy RTR, rather than build, much of what they need. Explaining how to remove some RTR item from its box doesn’t make for much, or very interesting, copy!
CNJ831
John,There are several avenues MR or any magazine has not touched in depth.
As far as RTR models there is far more to do then opening the box and placing 'em on the rail as you often mention…Still in 2010 many details remains to be added to the model as well as KD couplers,DCC/Sound decoders,ditch lights etc.
Nothing has changed expect today’s modelers have more to add in many cases-stuff we thought impossible just a few years ago.There are still Craftsman kits,scratch building supplies,detail parts out the yang yang,trees that still must be made etc,layouts to be built,track work and the list goes on…
I just don’t understand why you think all of that is gone with today’s RTR models when nothing has changed-unless you want to talk about wooden car kits or perhaps car kits with 1001 iddybiddy pieces-nope! Sorry! Those are still available for those who wants to build them as is shake the box car kits…
…
I fully believe what we are seeing in MR is what its always been without the advertisements from mail order shops and some of those was multi page…
Time to look again. Actual unemployment now is over 18 percent. They don’t count those who had the unemployment run out these days.
Much of those older issue’s page count is ads. Gone are the 5-page Standard Hobby Supply ads and the 2 or 3 page Walthers ads. A large part of the reason for the change is simple economics. Many of the hobby vendors are small mom and pop outfits and they can’t afford the premium ad prices of Model Railroader or RMC. And with all the online venues these days, you can litterally do the hobby and get all kinds of assistance from other modelers for free. Like it or not, the Internet is changing things. I read recently about a print magazine that went all-digital online and free (ad-supported only), their circulation went up 10 fold! As smart phones and pad devices grow in capability and come down in price, paper publications will need to adapt to the new mobile computing society of the 21st Century.
True Model Railroaders are fading out because pre-built items are plentiful and one can now buy complete layouts.
As far as these economic times, having less funds to spend on modeling should promote modelers to become craftsmen again. When I was starting in model Railroading, I didn’t have much to spend on the hobby, so I learned to scratch build. It cost about half or less to build a good building versus buying a kit or a pre-made building. The time to create a scratch built building is longer than if it were just purchased, and is an enjoyable part of the hobby.
No it doesn’t. That was pre-world wide web. The world has changed since then. Not just different times but a different world.
and by the way it has never been easier to buy a house in the USA than it is today. Tell me any other time in history where the government pays you $8.000 to buy a house? Then government backed really cheap loans…
I’m afraid that I cannot agree, Larry, because in a sense the nature of hobby has changed for a certain evolving faction of hobbyists and rather significantly so in recent years. Yes, many of today’s locos could be ungraded and customized with more detailed parts, but just how often does one really see that taking place? There is certainly little evidence of it among most of those posting to this site. And the same is true of many other of the more basic for
ah this again… Well, I’ve read through a lot of these posts and there are a lot of points made that, while yes they are true; some very true the REAL MRs just won’t be able to resist. It’s just in there. Whether or not there’ll be anything to put on the shelfs if the hobby isn’t supported by the masses who were ‘brought into’ or ‘turned onto’… the hobby is a different story.
We had some visitors at the club a while ago. Married couple with 2 young boys. 1 of them said, yeah, this is nice but I’m missing my Yankees game. The other one… we couldn’t get his attention long enough to actually have a conversation with him. So, I think this hobby (not poking fun at anyone here…) has 2 different kinds of participants, 1. the interested, and 2. the hopelessly addicted and has been that way since he found out they made trains in miniature kind. I’ve seen a lot of younger kids lately too.
Internet has also increased awareness and provided access to a multitude of information about trains of all scales including the prototype for those that really want to match a specific numbered unit as close as they can. The rule of thumb these days is to look at pictures of what you’re modeling. If this were 1992, my chances of seeing BN locos persay would be a handful depending on how many magazines I could find/wait for. Now I have free access to 3 different sites that host roster shots and between those 3 sites I can see pics of probably over 70% of the fleet, WITH the images dated and on some info of dates built, rebuilt dates and from what model to what new model and pics of those as well. Before the internet I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a GP39e, a GP28? GP10?. There are a few articles on them each that I found. I found them by using the online magazine directory (now gone!!!) The articles were all in different mags AND spanned over a period of 8 years. hhhmmmm,… I found out about those rebuilt units on the net by looking at roster site. I guess I could have looked in a loco annual or s
Let´s not discuss again, who or what is a real model railroader.
Yes, the hobby has changed over the last decades. There is a lot more stuff available these days, then maybe 20 or 30 years ago. Quality and detail also has improved, although there is still sufficient room to grow in that respect.
Like the hobby, MR has changed, reflecting the global changes into our hobby. There is less advertising, which has migrated to the internet. Content has changed as well, for reasons stated above.
Actually, I am quite happy with the changes. The abundance of R-T-R allows for more people to enter our hobby, people who would shun away, it it were a hobby only for “craftsmen”. There are new materials available, making the building of a fine layout much easier. Last, but not least, DCC makes multiple train operation much easier. You don´t need to be an electrician and spend years under layout, stringing wires.
The best part of all these changes is, that there are more options available nowadays. Want to be a scratch builder - there are plenty of materials available. Don´t like to build your own locos? Plenty of R-T-R locos in the market. Just pick your own way.
One thing has not changed: Model Railroading is Fun!
Don’t take it like it’s an insult about who is a “REAL” MRer. The first point of my post wasn’t about setting any kind of hierarchy, rather what I meant was that there will always be at least those kind of people who are into trains.
But as you state above, the new detailed stuff invites those who are not craftsman into the hobby. Which is good for them and for the hobby in general. The lesson learned here is that Model Railroading isn’t done without a lot of money. Take that away and we will all be scratchbuilders. So, how can you address the ‘state of the hobby’ without looking at that dynamic? You have to know what kind of people you’re dealing with.