Kids and Model Railroading

quote:

Will model railroading ever go back down in price?

Its unlikely that the prices of newly made trains will move down much. The companies will fold as demand and prices drop.

However, the prices on the secondary market for used, and new old stock trains will probably drop. They already have for many pieces. So those who are interested in trains are likely to be able for afford them.

I agree that previously inexpensive new model train stuff has apparently gone up in price way past any adjustments for inflation. I think model trains have been marketed beyond the toys they were once considered, into what is now refered to as, "Adult collectibles," a label I hate as it suggests something bought from a shifty store while wearing a overocat to hide your face as you dart to your car, hoping not to be seen...

I think that by pushing the prices way up like that, the idea is to target a segment of the market where people equate price with value. Other than that, I have no clue why stuff has recently shot up in price.

I'm into On30 and I can tell you Bachmann recently skyrocketed in prices. Cars you could routinely find from retail vendors on eBay for, say, $20 or so now sell for way past $40-50 bucks, and some almost up to $90! I bought all my rolling stock while I was dreaming, planning and scheming for my layout to be designed and built. I'm so glad I did that now as I don't think i could afford the rolling stock I have now at the current prices.

BTW, Brian, love the avatar shot with the early GCCW (or is it a Chevy 1/5 ton?). I'm a big fan of WW2 vehicles and have a 1944 Willys MB Jeep in the garage I take to displays and parades with my WW2 living history group...

I don't follow Bachmann closely, but Atlas cars have gone up, since I have been

familiar with them, so I'd like to know what is the basis for the escalation?  The

Chinese are buying too many Buicks, or what?  This stuff was thrown across the pond

so it could be made cheaper??  Ain't cheap. They seem to have gotten it backwards.

I'm glad I'm not the only person that feels this way about the prices of model trains lately. I feel like pretty soon they will lose the interest of kids all-together due to these prices and then the model train business will be in real trouble.

P51; I too am into On30 (among other scales) and the price of cars is ridiculous, $45-$50 seems to be the average for 1 freight car, that means a train of just 6 cars cost roughly $300! Plus another $200-$300 for the engine. I find that On30 locomotives go for a decent price on ebay, my last purchase was a slightly used inside frame 4-4-0 for only $55!, thank god for ebay or I would have no trains at all .

As for the truck its a 43 GMC Deuce & a Half owned by my friend who restores vintage military vehicles from trucks, to an LCVP, to tanks. As for me, if you get Kaiser Willys Magazine, you might be seeing my 50' Cj-3a "lil' buddy" on the cover of the 2015 catalog  ...

but I probably shouldn't derail ( train puns) my own thread.

I am old enough to have  shopped in hobby and general merchandise stores (Pennys, Woolworths, Sears, etc.) for trains in the 1950s and 1960s.  The internet did not exist and I don't recall ever hearing about a train show.  The only "online" shopping was by mail order through ads in "Model Railroader" and "Model Railroad Craftsman".

In comparison to income and allowance, trains were not cheap in the 1960s.  I could not afford a small HO diesel with a rubber band drive in those days.  None of my friends could afford them either.  We were middle class.  We were lucky to save enough money from our allowance to buy an Athearn Blue Box car kit every 9 months or so. The blue box wasn't a very good model.  A Varney or Mantua HO diecast steam engine was way out of our price range.  A $50 brass model was only a dream.  The bottom line is that trains have never been cheap for the average person.

What has changed is the multitude of items chasing the consumer dollar.  Kids can afford $50 to $100 video games and most kids that I know have several to many of them.  Most of the children in my family have downloaded about 1,000 iTunes songs at a price of about $1 each.  Monthly cell service can cost $100 plus and every kid has a phone.  Text messages depending on the plan are expensive.

I think it is not the price of trains that prevents people from entering the hobby but rather that they have so many other choices.  How much money remains to buy trains if you are spending your money on iTunes, video games, cell phone service, texting, etc.?

Joe

I'm not trying to say trains haven't always been expensive but as I stated in my first post the prices have quadrupled in the past 10 years, it's getting ridiculous.

I have here a catalog from 1967 for HO scale trains, a cheap diesel in 1967 cost $7.50 which equates to 53 2014 dollars, I have to say that's not even half of $125. Since this is the tinplate forum I did a little calculation for a cheap tinplate set from 1923 $5.75, which is $101 2014, now, $101 sounds a lot better than $470 in my opinion. Obviously I don't know everyone's financial background but I have to say comparing the prices with adjusted inflation still leaves hundreds of dollars unaccounted for on a full trainset, and if you look at what came in a set in 1923 vs. now it's amazing how much less you get for 3x the price!

Also, I think you might be going back to the "all kids just sit around and play videogames stereotype", we don't all sit around playing xbox (which no game that I'm aware of costs remotely close to $100) and texting, just like not all old men sit on their porch yelling at kids to stop playing on their lawn  

I'm with Joe.  There has never been a time when toy trains have been inexpensive or seemed reasonably priced, whether they be good times or bad, O gauge or N, RTR or kit.

I didn't hear any stereotyping in what Joe was relating...only that times and trends have changed.  Us grey hairs can remember when the number one boys hobby was model railroading.  I'm always amazed to see the younger set getting interested in trains.  I hit the brick a mortar LHS and find it encouraging that the hobby still can attract new blood.

Those $5.50 sets you quoted only came with an engine, 2 cars and an minimal oval of track.  No lights, no transformer, no batteries/ rheostat, no E unit, no sound.  The ultimate in model railroading austerity.  By the time you were out the door with a RTR set it cost you over $10.  Compare that with the cheapest Lioncheif offering at $250, which contains all you need to run trains, and it pretty much works out equally.  In fact I dare say the  entry level sets of today are a bargain.

Bruce

Brian:

Great to see your interest in a great hobby.  Sure, there are fewer people

enjoying this hobby, but that doesn't make it bad.  It helps to separate

you from the hordes of gamers that waste so much time and energy on

such useless pursuits.

This and similar hobbies are at the beginning of a revolution that is

just getting warmed up. And that is, 3D manufacturing.  It's been sad and

disappointing watching local hobby shops close, but we are at the beginning

of a truly revolutionary phase of personal fabrication which will more than

make up for the loss of the corner hobby shop.

If you have outgrown what is available to you, learn about 3D printing and

MAKE it!  Share your interests and capabilities with others, splitting up

the tasks that suit your interests, knowledge and capabilities.

-Mark

Keys6700,

    Very well said for a boy under 13 years old, got to admit when I was your age, Lionel did a lot of advertising, and had O gauge train layouts in all the big stores, with Lionel Company Reps talking about them, especially from Thanksgiving to almost Christmas time.   The cost however has not changed all that much, in fact even with the advanced remote control technology it's still in about the same cost range percentage wise.  Lionel trains when they 1st came out were very expensive, and men did not make all that much money each month. 

PCRR/Dave

Brewbster, you make a great point about the technology that goes into Lionel trains nowadays, I hadn't thought of all the computer chips and assorted doodads that they install. I think a lot of people did prefer some of the cheaper sets back in the day, like Marx, compared to Lionel.

Why not make a very basic set without all those bells & whistles though? I'm sure there are plenty of kids out there that would be plenty happy just to have a running trainset as they did with the cheaper sets back in the 50's & 60's.

Actually, I guess I'm A kid, I am eleven but the reason why I didn't say earlier is because I thought people would criticize me for being A kid. But to think about it, I could care less if people don't like me for being A kid.

Cost I don't think is much of the problem, given the maintenance and privacy costs of modern video games. Along with for an analogy having to change control set up every few years, consoles, pc hardware, like legacy from TMCC but with no backwards compatibility and having it happen about every 6 years. The thrill of change does not fit well with watching a beloved train around the layout every week.

On the other hand I have found that HO in particular has skyrocket in price while Lionel and the Lionchief sets have done a good job of keeping the price down, while adding features. My 0-6-0 tender engine now costs $75 to $85 instead of the $50 I payed for it, and the 2-6-2 now is over $125 from the $75 i payed for it 16years ago. now given they don't have some form of DCC are being discontinued which I find sad. since DCC HO gets really expensive fast pricing every one out from 600 to 800 dollar engine with about the same features, while remote locked and missing lash up capability, as a 200 dollar lionchief train set. miniaturization has its oddities and does not bode well.

Most of interest comes down to exposure, here on the west coast it is hard to find train events. the lack of commuter trains only aggravates this since Portland's light rail is not very impressive or wide spread. The west despite the westerns and 4449 is a bit sparse in the passenger train department aside from Amtrak. Which mostly follows the Interstate 5 corridor.

Oh, fun train fact Hudson soft a former video game company was named after the Hudson steam locomotive.  There is in the video game the habit of you must have fight on a train, even suplexing the engine in one case, so video games and trains can mix with a splash of probably missed on this forum humor. Just tossing it out there.

Keith,

    I might have known your Great Grandfather, when I was a little boy, where was the Packard dealership he worked at, and in what years.  See if you can find the picture and post it if you can, would love to see it.

Mercury Marx,

   I do believe you have the wrong idea son, most men on this forum know you and Keith are the life blood of our hobby, we never look down on you, we are glad you are here participating, we hope someday you pass on our hobby to your children.

You ever need something or have a question, no matter what it is, you speak up anybody ever gives you young guys a problem, you just let this old Special Forces Soldier know about it.  In reality we would like to see more of you guys and girls joining in the conversations, IMO you are one of the best parts of the OGR forum, remember everyone of us was 11 years old at one time also.

PCRR/Dave

Keith-

Your G-G-Great Grandfather must have had tons of fun with the layout at the Packard Dealer. Too bad nothing like that exists anymore....at least around here.

As for kids in Model Railroading, well, I see more & more kids & their parents at local trains shows in the past few years. It seems to be a healthy trend that has gone up & will continue to do so in the future. Have fun!

Mercury Marx, there is no problem with being a kid and being interested in toy trains. You and Keith are rare but nothing wrong with that. Just enjoy what you like and never let anyone tell you other wise.

It feels good to have people on my side. Also people do call me An "Old Sole" because I like old music, and old stuff.

I think that's more along the lines of what I was originally going off of as HO is probably the most popular scale right now.

I'm surprised that none of the model railroad companies advertise, you would think they would be able to reach more kids.

Mercury Marx & Keith-    Glad to have both of you in the hobby. Hope you have many years of enjoyment from it. Take care.

I'm still kid at heart, but at 51 I find the price of new trains out of sight. And out of reach.

Marx trains were the low cost alternative years ago and fortunately they were built well enough to be a viable low price option today.

Twenty years ago I was in HO and could find lots of good deals and could build a decent scale railroad. Once all the new stuff began coming out with DCC capabilities, I could no longer afford new HO locos and used ones were my only option. Same thing happened in On30, technology came in and prices rose. I gladly gave up realism for the simple joy of running old trains.

Technology has its good points I guess, but it also prices too many people out of the hobby. 

I am 14 and have loved trains since birth. The only time I buy new trains are basically Christmas and my B-Day because that's the only time I have the money. 

I have to agree the only time I buy is around this time of the year depends what I find though. However, I buy more at a  local train show around January. 

Careful, that rarely goes away. I have my On30 layout in progress, a collection of US WW2 stuff, a 1944 Willys Jeep in the garage. My family vacations were to museums and civil war battlefields. When I was your age, I had been civil war re-enacting for about 6 years and went to the massive Gettysburg re-enactment at your exact age.