For once we seem to agree, and it’s on actually more than one issue, lol!
I agree on Mt. St. Helens, completely, but that is off topic a bit…
and
You did a very good job of explaining one of the transportation paradoxes here in the US:
Except in a few population dense areas like the NE Corridor and parts of California, we just do not have the population density to make passenger rail really work. Every good traffic engineer knows that. To make people ride the train (ie make train economically viable), in some areas of the U.S., you have to let highways reach nearly total gridlock, which nobody really wants, has the stomach, to do. So instead we keep building more lanes, but we can never build our way out of congestion–yet still the politicians try.
More “enlightened” urban planners in the U.S. (not myself, I’m just a design guy designing what I’m paid to design) are pushing for a return to the America we once had: dense urban neighborhoods without the suburban sprawl. PA Dept of Tranportation, for one, is actually embracing that model–but it will take many years to convince people to move back to population centers where they can walk to many things and passenger rail will then become a “more viable” option than it currently is in suburbia.
Since Europe in general has much greater population density than in America, the passenger rail works much better for them from a traffic engineering perspective (leaving all tax/funding discussions out of the argument completely).
You mean there’s no model person holding a gun with a side of bacon strapped to him?
(Yes I’m poking fun of both us Yanks, and how Europe perceives us…I know that image is wrong. We would have two guns not one! [:P])
But I question the numbers. I hate to sound like a cynic, but if it were true, would there not be a European equivalent of Walthers? I know they have Trix, and Hornby/Rivarossi. But we have Athearn, Atlas, Bachmann, Lionel, Walthers, MTH, Bowser, Rapido and with far more prototypes. They have Lenz, Roco, and ESU. We have NCE, Digitrax, MRC, Soundtraxx, TCS, QSI.
I don’t know the answer here. But it does make one wonder.
Don´t think of Europe being one country. Despite the EU, Europe is not at all united, especially when it comes to model railroading [(-D]
If I were to list the businesses you find in my country, it´ll take my quite a few hours. There must be well over 200 of them! The same goes for the UK!
Talking of figures - Marklin´s sales amounted to an average of $ 120 million in the past years, which is about 10% above the next largest, the Kader Holding, owner of Bachmann. Maybe that´s an indication. Marklin´s main brands Marklin, Trix and LGB are mainly sold in Germany . Roco/Fleischmann sales reach half of Marklin´s turnover.
Just a quick reply to Sheldon’s earlier reply - I think you’re correct in that a limited expansion of existing passenger trains isn’t going to change anything…although in many long-distance trains, you now have only one train covering a route where 75 years ago you had several, giving you various times. Years back if the Empire Builder came through your hometown in North Dakota at 2 a.m., another train on the same route like the Western Star maybe came through at 1 p.m. - a much more convenient time.
However, I disagree that people wouldn’t take say high-speed trains if they become available. It always works out for example that ridership of new light-rail lines is always more than anticipated - people who didn’t think they’d ever ride the light rail end up using it. I think similarly, if you could get say from my home in the Twin Cities to Chicago in 4 hours instead 10 or 11 (remembering in the 1930’s steam trains made the trip in 6-7 hours!) many people who currently drive or fly would take the train.
Also, the “car culture” may be a baby-boomer thing. Many people in their 20’s don’t own cars now. Often this is a conscious choice because they prefer the “green” alternatives of mass transit.
Stix - that´s a development which is quite strong in Europe. Young folks don´t want to waste precious time stuck in a car on a congested motorway. They prefer to live a lot closer to their work place, if not within walking distance, then to be easily reached by public transport.
My son lives a 5 minute walk away from his office, has a streetcar halt within a2 minutes´ walk and a car rental station, where you can rent a car for an hour or so, right across the street. needless to say he does not own a car. Business trips are done by train or company pool car.
Perhaps we’re talking about two different things here:
I’m referring more to densely crowded commuter rail trains, than long distance, relatively high priced (as compared to airlines or driving one’s own car) passenger rail.
I just drove my family from Harrisburg, PA to Port Canaveral, FL, for a Disney cruise. It cost me less than $120 in gasoline, round trip, more than 2000 miles in a Honda Civic, and we got there in about the same amount of time as if we had taken Amtrak, but were able to stop where and when we wanted to. You also cannot ride Amtrak, as a family of 4, from even just Philadelphia to Orlando, for anywhere near that $120 price one-way. With Amtrak, on the same route, you still need taxis and/or rental cars in Florida, to transfer from the train station to Disney’s shuttle (we did do that train trip before, and it cost serious cash for just the wife and myself). This is on one of the heaviest tourist passenger traffic corridors in the U.S.
Yes–Americans would ride high speed rail–if it existed outside the NE corridor (which is relatively high speed now). However, from a purely engineering standpoint there are numerous issues primarily relating to funding, earth moving, right-of-way, and construction costs. Excepting a few high value corridors (my college buddy did the actual alignment study for high speed rail between LA and Las Vegas), the cost of building high speed rail is so prohibitive it would require a major shift in attitude for both the American people and the government.
You could never sell enough tickets, at any price, to the occasional American long distance tourist passengers to even begin to fund a new high speed rail line in most areas of the U.S. The government would have to get rid of any illusions/delusions of passenger trains covering their costs.
Now, between LA and Las Vegas, that one line and a few others might have merit due to t
I’m always amazed how topics change…no problem as modern train travel is interesting and still is the inspiration for many of us modelers. For those who forgot or wandered off message, I was trying to see if anyone had any knowledge of where model railroading is most popular…here of off shore? And which country has the most model railroad actvity.
Judging by the number of model train shows - if that is an indicator - my best bet is UK.
Judging by the amount of model railroading clubs and people being a member in a club, my vote goes to Germany.
Judging by the craftsmanship - my vote goes to The Netherlands, followed by UK, France, Switzerland (!) and the US/Canada. Germany is too much of an RTR market for that criteria.
So I have to ask, your son lives in some sort of townhouse, apartment building or other multi family structure? That is great for many people, even here in the US, but personally I would rather not.
I could not imagine building a model railroad living in an apartment.
I like the idea of living close to work - my office is in my home and sometimes I don’t have to drive anywhere.
But not being able to just get in my car and go, especially in an emergency, is a level of independence I am not willing to give up.
We travel distances of 10, 20 or 30 miles just to shop, eat out, go to movie, or run basic errands - we have no choice, that is how spread out things are here.
Model railroading seems pretty popular in this region of the US, and I do tnink it varies a lot in different parts of the US. As I have talked about before, basement filling layouts ae
I know I’m a trouble maker, but I must make one more comment.
This comment maybe true where you live, it is surely true in some major American ubran areas.
But generally speaking we get in the car and drive around the 30 mile radius from our home that is our normal activity area without hardly ever “sitting in a traffic jam”.
You will need hard figures that is used by the industry and we will never see those as outsiders.
All evidence points at a steady hobby since we have seen new companies in the past 10 years plus the latest-Scale Trains. The number of monthly releases is staggering if one cares to study the monthly data.
While local model train shops has decline there is still hobby shops that is willing to order model trains,the latest slot car or military model.
But,the sales tend to be on line since the discount is better which is important to the budget minded modeler and its convenient-shop from your home instead of driving to the nearest LHS which may not have the item in stock or has dusty full price stock dating back to the 90s.
However, I think I still get the best overall “experience” or “value” from buying in person when I can. The local train stores I patronize know that I buy a few items mail order, yet at the same time, they know that if I can I will often buy from them. Mail order does not offer the sense of comaradarie of hanging out on a Saturday with a group of the “usual suspects” as the local train store does.
This year I have purchased two new steamers from the local train store, and only one from M.B. Klein. It is also true that the one purchase from MBK saved me $100 cash, but being able to inspect a new steamer in person before buying can sometimes be worth the extra $100, so I figure the savings “balance out” if I do both.
I know I am fortunate to be able to shop at a real, living local train store (actually 2 of them) and that others may not have one within a few hundred miles. Also, as my son is getting pitching lessons from a former pro pitcher, that conveniently is getting me to a store in Montoursville, PA, just about every other Saturday…
I fully agree and if I had a good shop I would spend the majority of my monthly hobby budget there since I’m not overly fond of buying on line but,nearest shop is a 52 mile round trip with dusty stock at full price and no Saturday morning gatherings…
I’m also getting to the point where I need less and less but,still like would like to eyeball the newest rolling stock and maybe buy it if it catches my fanacy. A Aberdeen & Rockfish 50’ waffle side boxcar would be such a car…There are several others on my wish list as well.
Sheldon, quoting your reply would take too much space, I’m on an iPhone and have fat fingers.
High speed rail service isn’t designed to serve “everybody”, but to make travel between large urban areas fast and efficient. At distances of about 500 miles, high speed rail is competitive with air travel and much faster than car between city centers.
As far as being able to beat or at least match air travel with a car at distances of 800 - 1000 miles, no. From our house in Monterey to downtown Los Angeles is 320 miles and projected driving time is just under 5 hours. Given airport constraints, this is right about the ragged edge of competitive point to point timing (using Monterey Airport). Any longer distance and the plane wins unless planes have to be changed.
Just as an aside, when we drove from Bilbao to Segovia, we parallelled rail lines in several locations and I was hoping to see at least one train. Well, just north of Burgos, we finally did see one. My granddaughter said the train looked like it hauled garbage and I had to agree with her. Oh well, better to haul garbage than be hauled away AS garbage.
Here in the east nobody lives in the “city center” anymore - so getting to and from airports and train stations is typically a 45 minute trip in itself.
The city center is office space, government buildings, tourist destinations, sports and entertainment arenas, historic structures and boarded up row houses.
Sure, there is a “niche” of yupy residents that live among all that - good for them.
Point is the costs for more mass transit just don’t ad up - not with my tax dollars - and the current Governor here in Maryland agrees…
Car vs plane - maybe not well worded originally, but for me, 800 miles is when I would start thinking about a plane - if I was in a hurry. 300 mi
A bit late here, but I can put in a few words about places not mentioned yet. Japan has a pretty huge model railroad industry, from what I understand. Mostly n scale, with a bit of ho. Like Europe, trains are very much a part of everyday life, so a lot of people are interested in them. Kato has a lot of neat models for that market. Interestingly, Korea barely has a market at all for these things, despite the large amount of rail traffic there. Even though there are several Korean brass train companies, none of them make Korean prototype models. Most moodelers there have to deal with foreign models, so you see a good mix of american, Japanese, and European models there. I was lucky to find a reasonably priced korean model, which was leftover stock from a company that closed down a while back. Koreans have about the same amount of space that Japanese have, so space must not be an issue. So it leaves me stumped.
Actually, I’d suggest space is an issue for most Japanese (which is probably why N is more popular than HO) - so I’m not sure where they fit all their layouts. Here in the UK space is an issue for most home builders - small spare bedroom or loft space is the most we can hope for. I live in the suburbs of london and our little flat is 645 sq ft - the only place I could put up a permanent layout would be in the loft, once I’d insulated it properly.
Which is why so many British modelers tend to build small shelf layouts.
As for European railways - I have relatives in Scotland (420 miles as the crow flies) and I wouldn’t dream of taking the train - way too expensive v flying - and I don’t own a car as I have no need of one living in London (5 minute walk to the Tube station then 40 minutes to Central London). I used to use Eurostar for work once a month or so (London - Paris then Paris to Reims by TGV) and that was fine. I very much like the Spanish railways though - very cheap, good quality fast trains.
British railways are rather a victim of their own success - because they are so busy they are very unpleasant to use in my opinion. I’ve always been rather confused at how you Americans have failed to build proper railways on the East Coast between your major conurbations.