Recenty I was in a bull session about where model trains are the most prevelant.
One person mentioned that Europe has seven times the model railroad activity than we have here. Then Austraila, Japan and Sweden. Does anyone have close to what the actual figures are?
I do suspect that off shore model railroad activities are stronger, but several times as large??? When I was an active brass dealer 10 years back, almost 90% of my sales of anything over $1000 went overseas…but that was brass…not mainstream.
I don’t honestly know. However, I’ve noticed that a lot of the “how to” videos on youtube are from folks in the UK and Ausralia. I’m also amazed at how many overseas modelers are modeling US railroads. Ken
I can only guesstimate, as there are no figures available, but I think that Germany and UK are the countries with the highest number of people who are into model railroading. Some years ago, the number of folks being a member in a model railroading club in Germany was said to be above 6 million out of a country with a population of slightly less than 80 million people.
Ken - do your search in German, Dutch and French and you´d be amazed about the results!
Perhaps Europe has more members given that trains are more commonly seen and used in cities. London, Paris, and other places depend on trains and I bet that is a large draw for people.
It would be interesting to read how many subscriptions MR fills with various European countries.
This makes sense in Europe, since the train is regular transportation for many of those folks. It’s still a part of daily life.
Out here, I found out my roommate had never ridden the commuter Metra, and lived in the Chicago area all his life. I was floored. For some of us, I guess trains are a freight nuisance that keeps us from getting from place to place in our cars.
I suspect we’ll soon see an upswing in the MRR culture here in the US, with all the Arduino stuff going on and the ne-wish “maker” culture, and it becoming more computerized.
This may be slightly [#offtopic], but each year we have a US Model Railroading Convention in Germany. The following video shows scenes from the layouts on display at last year´s convention:
Many communities here in the U.S. want the railroads to be “out of sight” screened all from public view as though they were some kind of “urban blight”. It’s small wonder that interest in the U.S. has waned, as today it is becoming more difficult to even see the trains in urban areas. I offer as Exhibit A: the plethora of expensive screening vegetation planted around the former Reading Rutherford Yard at Harrisburg, PA. You can’t see the trains from the adjacent roadway network anymore, at least not well.
Trains are dirty, loud, huge machines, and the areas they inhabit are the same.
Pretty much the reasons we love them are the reasons other people hate them, and that’s unlikely to change. Even my town has the train station tucked behind the main street drag, and the track mostly hidden by foliage on either side.
I agree with Sir Madog: but because hobbies and leisure activities are a sign of realitive affluence and free time. Excessive work hours cuts into other activities.
If it’s true that there are proportionally more Europeans in the hobby, then I suspect there are two reasons:
First, as mentioned, we tend to tuck our railroads away, out of sight, and we eliminate railroad grade crossings wherever possible. People just don’t have the exposure that they did in the past.
Second, most Americans don’t see the railroad as something relevant to their lives. They have become conditioned to ignore Amtrak and other rail services as a viable transportation mode, even when they are actually their most sensible options. When they do ride trains, they often innocently ask incredibly naive questions because the milieu is so foreign to them. In Europe and other parts of the world, typical citizens accept railroads as a logical and sensible means of transport.
If it’s invisible and irrelevant to your experience, there’s not much likelihood that it will become your hobby.
I would guess per capita the U.K. has the most railfans (“railway enthusiats”) and modellers, probably also has the greatest numbers of old engines that have been preserved - often still being used. Apparently on the Fort William to Mallaig line British Rail (or whatever they call it now) still runs restored steam engines on the train in the summer.
If not U.K., probably Germany / Austria? LGB, Marklin, ESU, Preiser, Kibri etc. Don’t think there’d be that many manufacturers there if there wasn’t a lot of demand.
Walthers carries a lot of German made HO stuff, you don’t see much U.K. stuff because it’s OO not HO so not that usefull over here.
In UK, the number of key players in the market is small - it´s basically Bachmann and Hornby, surrounded by a great number of cottage businesses catering for what´s is called the “serious” model railroader. Not to forget Peco for track.
In Germany, the number of players has gone down as companies went belly-up in the past years. You have the Marklin/Trix/LGB group, Fleischmann/Roco, Bemo (German and Swiss narrow gauge), Tillig (TT scale, HOm narrow gauge), Piko, Preiser, Faller, Viessmann/Kibri/Vollmer and also a number of smaller businesses, like ESU, Uhlenbrock, Lenz (the inventor of DCC) and lots of others.
UK is much more of a builder´s market, whereas Germany is more RTR.
Both UK and Germany have regular (daily) steam services, the line from Fort William to Mallaig in Scotland is just one of many in both countries. British Rail is no more - it has been split up into many privatized entities. The Mallaig train is operated by Westcoast Rail - see here
Hard to say without hard numbers but,I suspect Germany would be among the top five.
I would say America would be among the top five just by judging the number of railroad videos on you tube and the way manufacturers keep cranking out new products plus we’ve seen several new companies over the past 10 years.
All to sadly our hobby has been a closest hobby and over the past few years that closet has grown rather large. Town A can have a very nice club and only a select few may know about it because the club never holds a public open house,has a membership drive or sponsors a train show.
Both NMRA and printed magazines may not be a a measuring tool like years ago because many no longer buy magazines or find the need to join the NMRA…
Then how about the thousands of hidden modelers that may have a 4x8’ or large layout for relaxation but,doesn’t consider them selves model railroaders? Those are the types you see or hear at toy shops,train shows or places like Hobbyland that reportedly buying a new car or engine for “the boy” or “Grandson” while in all truth they’re buying it for theirself…
Even among modelers they are willing to talk fishing,hunting etc with follow workers not even knowing the person they are speaking to is a model railroader and vis versa.
Then how many of those young faces at trackside has models?
My wife is a Brit and Dec 2014 we went over to her home town of South Shields near Newcastle to work on her sons immigration as well as a several day trip down to London and back up to Newcastle (Newcastle Brown Ale fame). While there we visited one of MR forums posters, Jon Grant (in Sunderland) and also the Sunderland A1 model RR club. The members really impressed me with how serious they were about the hobby despite lack of home layout space - many of them had made trips to the US and railfanned. The club had a large space in the upper level of a wearhouse and multiple layouts housed there. Most were US type trains actually.
I visited a fairl small store in a small town of South Shields which had an entire long wall dedicated to magazines and counted over 35 different train related magazines. Here you’d be lucky to find a fifth of that.
Over time I’ve come to realize that the UK has a much higher percentage of train fans per capita than the US. I’ve been to Germany on for extended stays some years back, as long as a couple months, and don’t recall getting that impression there although I wasn’t exposed to the hobby there. I am aware of some large displays through forum links but not sure if that represents the general population or just some huge attractions.
When I was in Austria, I was quite delighted to find that most of the larger cities had model railway clubs. I visited the club in Salzburg (very hospitable) whose layout represented the Salzach/Tauern area of the Alps, and the club in Innsbruck (again, very hospitable) which modeled the spectacular Arlberg Railway, Austria’s only major east-west Alpine railway. Each club had quite a few members, and of all ages. The hobby appears to be quite healthy in the land of Schubert and Mahler. Lord knows that the railways themselves are! Forty trains a day is almost considered a branch line, lol!
Our trucks are big, dirty, fast and loud and can take up as much as 40% of the traffic volume on Interstate highways, which I actually design for a living (working on new interchanges on I-95 at Philadelphia). If you’ve ever stood right along even just rural I-81 during heavy truck hours, as I have, it’s generally noisier than standing along a train track anywhere–even on Horseshoe Curve with the brake squeal.
And a certain segment of the population loves their monster truck rallies!
But excepting in some residential areas, we don’t screen all our highways from view.
Why the double standard?
And if I had a dime for every fine Pennsylvanian I met who believes our railroads are dying and on their last legs, I would be a very rich man indeed.
In Europe, where the train service can be outstanding, methinks the trains are just more “cool” to the average citizen. So that might explain the popularity?
A few thoughts from the son of a life long trucking industry manager.
My father was a model railroader, and started me in the hobby by age 10…he worked in the trucking industry all his life - including working for the Southern Railroad piggyback service in the early 60’s.
No matter the public knowledge or perception in the US, there is a steady shift from trucks to intermodal rail for long distance freight.
This could have happened 60 years ago, but the overly regulatory government stood in the way of piggyback - while at the same time giving the trucking industry larger/heavier rigs every time they asked.
53’ trailers? Over 80,000 lbs, they have lost their minds.
BUT, total deregulation a few decades back has started a steady gradual shift to intermodal.