Number of hobbyists

Moonson, excellent question.   I've wondered this myself for awhile.

I am going to a stab at it, and throw out a number for the US only.

I am basing this on limited logic and simple math, but really it is a number that comes from the clouds.

No less than 459,640 total modelers is my guess, with no less than 22,982 of them being in O gauge.

Again this is based on a few assumptions, and the following limited logic and simple math.

Here goes:

According to the OGR Forum, they have 9,991 Registered Members.

J & C Archive Studios Archives, of which I (We) am (are) a Member(s), has about 1500 Members last time I checked.

That totals 11,491 people, although some I know, belong to both, (and there are many other forums).

I myself didn't even know about this forum until about 2 years ago at best, and I have been in the hobby my entire life really, and I'm in my early 50's.

I will therefore put forth the assumption that for every person who knows of these two forums, there is at least one modeler or collector who does not, or is an armchair modeler, which I have also been, at various times in my life.   That puts that number at 22,982 (11,491 X 2).

Now, I have read by people in the know and those who may have a better handle on this, that O gauge alone represents perhaps 5% of the Hobbyists/Collectors/Modelers in the entire group of scales, combined.

If that is even close to being true, that would suggest between the remaining scales, that there may be 20x the number 22,982, which is 459,640.     The reason I say "no less than", is because 459,640 people doesn't sound like much when you consider that there are..... what, between 250 and 300 million people in our country alone?    So I think, that the number is really a lot larger, and I mean a lot larger, just here in the US.  

I don't sell trains as a retailer, so I have no idea from an item sales/quantity perspective, whatsoever.

And worldwide, whew......huge!!! 

What does everybody else think?

Here's the stats for Model Railroader magazine in 2010:

http://www.echo-media.com/mediaDetail.php?ID=17047

Average monthly sales - 146,000 copies.

Average income - $75K

Average age - 58

Way back when someone on here started a topic of average age of the folks who post here and I think it was 55.  I can see that 58 is probably correct now.

The above averages are for 1 magazine only.  I'm almost sure all magazines have to release similar data on a yearly basis so maybe if someone had the data for all RR magazines they could come up with a number.  Then again, not everybody subscribes to a magazine, so any number is a SWAG.

Of the 600 people in my old command, I knew of only 6 who were model railroaders, 1%.  I would guess that probably no more than 1% of the entire US population are model railroaders, which would be approx 3,000,000.

1% of 300,000,000. is 3,000,000.

Something around 500,000 for the hobby overall (U.S. participation) is probably a fairly good guess.  But any number would be strictly guesswork since, to the best of my knowledge, there has been no real data gathered for a good many years.  In part that's because we have a hobby made up of various subsets (scales/gauges) and it would take quite a bit of research to develop anything near an accurate figure.

Suffice it to say that we represent, despite our obvious enthusiasm, a very small portion of the overall population.  And the total number is likely to continue on a downward trend over the next decade or two.

I think a "hobby" can have a wide range of involvement...a loop under a Christmas tree/small collection vs a year-'round layout/major collection... or someone who restores/owns old cars vs someone who has car books/goes to shows.

I belong to a Yahoo group related to the collecting of 3-D photo slides that were taken in the 1950s. Although there are approx. 80 in the group, only about 12 of us actually collect them.

Man, I'm glad all I have to do is count money for a living

Thanks, it was early this morning when I posted

The TCA claims to have 27,000 members and there are a lot of train guys who don't belong. (I don')  I would bet that the O gaugers alone are close to 50,000 at least.

Posted by Bob Delbridge:

"Man, I'm glad all I have to do is count money for a living

Thanks, it was early this morning when I posted "

No problem Bob.  I was on the second sip of coffee and don't have a clue how I generated the cerebral activity to calculate and reply.

My guess is that your estimate is too conservative.

I bet the major train mfgs know exactly what the # is.  Maybe one of them will chime in.  We probably have close to 50,000 from the mid atlantic states alone.

My two cents is that we may have 100,000 folks in O gauge at some level of interest or involvement, the forum family is about 10 percent of that number. That means that about 90 percent of those in O gauge are out there somewhere enjoying this great hobby and so sometimes I believe that we think this and other forums are the pulse of this hobby but Iam not so sure.And Iam sure in all other facets of model railroading this holds true as well except say the number involved could be higher or lower in HO or S or N or standard gauge maybe.....

27,000. ..50,000. .. 100,000.. 460,000.....3,000,000. !

So no one really has a handle on this do they!

I like the idea of defining "involvement."  Perhaps date of last purchase would be a factor.

For example, my dad could technically be "involved" in the hobby because he has HO trains that we had when I was a kid.  I don't think they've been out of the box in many years.  Same with most of my N scale stuff.

If you raided mom and dad's house tonight, you would find evidence of involvement in model railroading.  However, it would not be active involvement. 

I'll bet they don't.  Each of them has a handle on their respective sales figures and some other data (those who register their warranty or are club members, for example), but that's about it.  And few if any of them share that information.  All they could do is make a "guesstimate" based on the limited area they work with.

I think one could look at circulation of magazines to get a handle on this.  Last I heard OGR was in the neighborhood of 30,000.  The O Scale 2-rail contingent is about a tenth that, as I recall.

Not everybody subscribes to hobby magazines - I have not bought a Model Railroader in decades.  Others just read their buddies' copies, especially in 2- rail.  I am going to guess that O Gauge has in excess of 100,000 serious hobbyists, not counting Christmas tree stuff.

But here is another question - the 2-railers have asked if we are in decline.  My opinion is that O Gauge and O Scale are on the increase in absolute numbers, and have been for a long time.  It looks to me like there is a lot more new stuff out there right now than at any time in the past.

A question would be what constitutes "being in the hobby"?  Owning a train set and running it once a year at Christmas, or not at all?  Or is it someone who runs trains all the time??

Trying to figure that out would skew the numbers wildly.

Allan I guess we'll just have to disagree on this one.  I'd be very surprised if the Wolf & Lion didn't know their potential for sales in the o gauge market.  These guys surely aren't playing a guessing game.  I do however agree with your statement "And few if any of them share that information".  These guy certainly keep this kind of info close to the vest.  

So, does that mean a guy who buys two locomotives, three boxcars, a flat car, a caboose from four different dealers is counted by the manufacturers as 7 distinct model railroaders?

Rusty

Maybe we should take it upon ourselves to do a census within our own states or regions.

I may be off by 10-20%, but I think Texas has 7, Oklahoma 3, and Kansas has 2 - but one of those may not count since they closed down the old Wichita train station....

What ever the true numbers...We ARE a blessed few! Each one of us has a chance to visit out childhood a few hours at a time...Just a thought.

Well, when you go through old magazines and see the prototypes offered in HO in

the 1950's, and then realize that many of those have never shown up in O three

rail, if numbers are increasing with the population, the census of participants must be going up in other scales, because we get cancellations, so the numbers in this gauge/scale must be going nowhere or down.  Certainly it has seemed like O two rail must be shrinking, for I have watched shops that dealt in O scale material close or convert to three rail or HO/N, and it has become much harder to find anything useful to modelers in 1/4 inch.  

Wonderfully put, Happy Papppy, a thought well-worth contemplating, indeed.

Frank