Just curious if any one has any idea on the size of the hobby ( All gauges). I read recently that a couple years ago they estimated it generated 1.56 billion in sales. That's a lot of zeros.
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Seems high, if accurate, it is being driven by the HO community.
Bill
That would mean 1 million people spending $1,500 a year. Highly unlikely there are 1 million model railroaders in the market.
Reardless, the estimated sales in the entire toy industry was $26.5 billion. Source: http://www.toyassociation.org/...af-8bc1-72b99567df1e
I doubt model railroading would amount to 6 percent of the toy market.
Don,t Forget the European and Japanese markets.
Mikey
I don't know the numbers, but model railroading is much larger in Germany and Great Britain than it is in the US; big in Japan, though I know less about it. Worldwide the $1.56B seems reasonable. Nationally - no.
To my knowledge, by the percentages, there are more RR modelers in Germany (pop 83M per Wikipedia) than in the US.
I believe that GB (pop 61M; US 325M) has more in absolute numbers than does the US. Or so I've read (must be true, right?). Maybe Germany has the same situation...?
Railroad/railway modeling is not the "marginal" hobby in a few places that the US version is. More mainstream, and considered less "weird" by the general population.
Yes, in Europe and countries like Japan, where the railroads are still a large part of their transportation system, modelers have something to see almost every day. In Britain and Germany, the preservation of trains and railways is huge, compared to what we have here.
Worldwide? It’s possible, I guess. Kato does do a lot of N scale business in Japan in addition to its Kato USA market.
But raw numbers like that hold little meaning from our domestic hobby perspective. American companies care about American sales when determining what American prototype models to produce.
Unfortunately we still have no idea what our domestic sales are for our hobby. Too many pieces, scales and companies, which closely guard such information.