Yes, there is enough of the vintage Lionel but, out of consideration for the rest of the O gauge group I certainly want to see the other suppliers prosper-but not too much !! The original Lionel tried to diversify ,too. Nothing wrong with that as long as they invest some $$ in train development.
bostonpete posted:EBT Jim posted:A positive .... 20,000 folks .... families .... at Trainfest in Milwaukee.
A negative ... young/new members enthusiastically show their semi-scale engines on the OGR hi-rail, o27 and traditional 3-rail o gauge forum, and some people feel the need to "rain on their parade" by pointing out the model's lack of prototypicalness.
Amen!
My wife and her girl friend were going to dinner downtown. Her girl friend lives in the burbs and didn't want to park her new Lexus GX in the big city so my wife asked me to drive them into downtown to drop them at the restaurant. Once they got out I moved around from the back seat and slipped into the driver’s seat, put it in gear and started to move away. The first thought I had was once you get past the luxury stuff it was a JEEP! It sounds, rides moves, stops and feels like a Jeep, took me back to my youth on my parents ranch, OK so that Jeep sure didn't have leather seats or air-conditioning but the basic movement, sound and feel hadn't changed, at least not much if it did, in the Lexus. Those Japanese are pretty clever, imitation being the best form of flattery I guess.
Bogie
OldBogie posted:...My wife and her girl friend were going to dinner downtown. Her girl friend lives in the burbs and didn't want to park her new Lexus GX in the big city so my wife asked me to drive them into downtown to drop them at the restaurant. Once they got out I moved around from the back seat and slipped into the driver’s seat, put it in gear and started to move away. The first thought I had was once you get past the luxury stuff it was a JEEP! It sounds, rides moves, stops and feels like a Jeep, took me back to my youth on my parents ranch, OK so that Jeep sure didn't have leather seats or air-conditioning but the basic movement, sound and feel hadn't changed, at least not much if it did, in the Lexus. Those Japanese are pretty clever,...
Bogie
Side-bar (to main topic): Oh. I always thought Lexus looked like thinly-veiled imitations, in their lines and overall body shape, of M.Benz. I'm serious.
Railrunnin posted:Steve, I changed my browser to Chrome and got right in - funny how that works with different browsers. Thanks for the tip.
Paul
I use Chrome and still can't get in.
Dave Warburton posted:Railrunnin posted:Steve, I changed my browser to Chrome and got right in - funny how that works with different browsers. Thanks for the tip.
Paul
I use Chrome and still can't get in.
Several times throughout the day, I tried Chrome, Firefox along with Explorer on my computer at work and no luck. I got home used my little Nexas tablet and it finally worked. If you have a smaller device, maybe try that.
Tom
If my economics are correct, we need enough new members each year to step in and consume the dollar value of all the trains and equipment left behind by those who every year pass on or leave the hobby for some other reason. That ignores the sale of new items manufactured each year. There needs to be a one to one replacement of long term hobbyists also in order to maintain the status quo. If those balances are not maintained then the membership of the hobby will shrink along with the prices of the trains. That excludes select pristine pieces which will continue to serve the antique and museum markets.
With significant constraints on the modern avg median income, I think the market will shrink and the prices will erode further. In the 30s, 40s, 50s and maybe 60s trains were magical with the newness of electricity and remote control features previously unheard of. The new features in postwar trains and accessories were things that had previously unattainable or not thought of as marketable. They were desirable by the mainstream of the public, not just the modeling hobbyists.
In today's market, remote control, IR, wireless are all expected almost on every product. Heck you bed now talks to you and tells you whether or not you slept well and charts your progress. Your refrigerator talks and has a TV. What is new and exciting to the current generation is the handheld devices and the power to access information and the power to communicate. This includes the desire to be entertained by movies, youtube, video games etc. Will that phase pass? Surely it will, but probably replaced by things WE haven't imagined yet. Will they revert back to toy trains? I think only that segment of society that enjoys modeling, craftsmanship, and the joy of producing a product/artform will stay the course of model trains. Trains will always be entertaining to young kids, but the kids today will migrate out of that phase quicker than we did in the 50s and 60s. They will migrate to tablets, dvd players, and smart phones as soon as they can comprehend and enjoy their power.
Here's a counter article with an alternate perspective: Maybe Model Trains Aren't Dying?
Almost want to start a go fund me page for Lionel. Not really! If Lionel is complaining that the hobby is declining then maybe $2000 dollar price tags for locomotives are their first problem. Rehashing locomotives and not enticing new customers is their fault not aging customers.
Consider that the demise of toy trains seemed just about iminent in the 1960s and early 1970s. This was blamed on kids shifting their interests to space toys and such. A pretty dire time for toy trains. Growing up in the 70's offered little to the O27 hobbyist. There were some bright spots but nothing like what we have today. Sometimes things go in cycles...in and out of favor. The herd may be thinning a bit but we are far from extinct. If we are witnesses to the end I sure am glad I was here to be a part of it. If it goes the other way and has a resurgence then I hope I am here to see that too. But at least I can say that today is definitely a good time to be in the hobby and so was yesterday. BigRail
BigRail posted:Consider that the demise of toy trains seemed just about iminent in the 1960s and early 1970s. This was blamed on kids shifting their interests to space toys and such. A pretty dire time for toy trains. Growing up in the 70's offered little to the O27 hobbyist. There were some bright spots but nothing like what we have today. Sometimes things go in cycles...in and out of favor.
VERY good point there. Train and cowboy toys almost vanished entirely when space toys became the thing for kids after Al Shepard went up in 1961. If you're not old enough to recall, go look up how popular cowboy stuff had been for kids prior to the 60s. It was HUGE and then *poof* - gone when the space race started!
Cowboy-related stuff for kids never recovered from what it'd been like. But obviously the trains eventually did.
I just do not believe that in the fairly near future that there will be enough consumers willing to fork out the kind of money that I believe a lot of our posters on this forum have been willing to do. This older generation, me included, has been caught up in the "realism craze" that has demanded manufacturers to produce higher end products, since many have been willing and able to afford them. Even the most modest of us may be shocked if we actually totaled what we have spent on trains. I applaud the younger folks here who are hooked on the hobby, but I just do not see the type of spending in the this next generation as I do in ours. At least large enough to keep Lionel, MTH, and any other manufacturer in business.
At one time, many thought that the post-war Lionel trains were going to be a great retirement plan...our old trains might be gold mines. That bubble burst and now the value of most of those are a fraction of what a new Legacy or Premier locomotive is with all the "bells and whistles". Model railroading actually was boosted tremendously by that new technology which kindled a new interest in us old timers (well some of us....I know many of you have stayed with post war and have beautiful collections and or layouts). But life happens and we will all come to face the fact that these material things will not be important anymore. Loved ones get ill or we begin to decline ourselves and the trains will fade. As we die out, the glut of these trains will also hit the market. If I were a manufacturer, I would be a bit anxious to the future. And many of you are right on.....we will not have to worry about it. It is a heyday right now. But time passes by quickly.....
Rick
OldBogie posted:bostonpete posted:EBT Jim posted:A positive .... 20,000 folks .... families .... at Trainfest in Milwaukee.
A negative ... young/new members enthusiastically show their semi-scale engines on the OGR hi-rail, o27 and traditional 3-rail o gauge forum, and some people feel the need to "rain on their parade" by pointing out the model's lack of prototypicalness.
Amen!
My wife and her girl friend were going to dinner downtown. Her girl friend lives in the burbs and didn't want to park her new Lexus GX in the big city so my wife asked me to drive them into downtown to drop them at the restaurant. Once they got out I moved around from the back seat and slipped into the driver’s seat, put it in gear and started to move away. The first thought I had was once you get past the luxury stuff it was a JEEP! It sounds, rides moves, stops and feels like a Jeep, took me back to my youth on my parents ranch, OK so that Jeep sure didn't have leather seats or air-conditioning but the basic movement, sound and feel hadn't changed, at least not much if it did, in the Lexus. Those Japanese are pretty clever, imitation being the best form of flattery I guess.
Bogie
You should have folded down the windshield and taken the long way home with the top off 
I know a lot of younger train enthusiasts. They are mainly into HO trains due to cost and size.
At 32 years old, I’m quite a bit younger than most of you guys. While I’ve always setup Lionel trains under the Christmas tree, I didn’t seriously get back in the hobby until I was about 27. I had graduated college as an electrical engineer and had the money and some free time. Most people my age do not have the money to buy trains. I got into the MTH brand because they were nice and somewhat affordable. Five years later I have several thousand dollars invested and at the moment nothing I “must have”. There are a few trains I may eventually buy.
After visiting the Big E trains show in Springfield, MA last month, I see that all of the major O gauge manufacturers are still making the same mistake. They make an effort to get little kids into trains but don’t make much of an effort to get my generation that now has money back into buying trains. Lionel/MTH/Atlas/Bachmann all bring a minimal set of locomotives/cars to display catching a minimal amount of my interest. I can look at them in catalogs and online but when you actually see something in person it makes you want to buy it. There is a certain magic to seeing the trains in person and sometimes being able to handle them. A good example of a great display at the Big E is Charles Ro. Charles Ro had a huge number of locomotives in open boxes on display right where I can see them.
Another thing that turns me away is the price of new locomotives and cars. While I make good money, I will not spend $2000+ for a steam engine, $650 for a diesel engine, $100 for a boxcar ect... I understand that there are people with lots of money that will.
Aside from the manufacturers, I wish I could find a local O gauge club that gave me a warm welcome invite where I can run and learn more about trains.
With new housing developments in Michigan the houses are a smaller square shape, so that the largest model railroad size that fits in these new houses are HO Scale. Edwin Allen Homes has built a large group of these small, square houses.
For true O Scale sized model railroads people are going to have to start a club in some of the unused industrial structures across Michigan.
Andrew
Ranger Rick mentioned cost as a barrier to entry by new people. I agree but from a little different perspective.
I'm new to the hobby and am in it with my own kids to play with the stuff. We plan it, build it, play with it and enjoy it ... together. No interest in the collecting aspect of this.
I find the pricing for products very irritating, a turn off, and too much work validating what I should pay for something. A lot of stuff is overpriced in my opinion and I think it is in large part due to people manipulating pricing and trying to pass off everything as being a collectors item including new cars. I love the "rare" post on ebay for cars broken up from starter sets selling in retail stores right now.
Here are a few other examples of things I find disturbing and, as far as I can see, pretty common in the marketplace:
I bought the Army tank flat car produced and sold by Menards from them for $24.99. You can still order it at this price. But if you don't know anything about Menards (never heard of them before buying a train magazine this past Christmas) and you go out to ebay to look for army rolling stock, there are multiple train re-sellers offering these same cars for $40-$50, plus inflated shipping cost. How does that work? The car is still available in the marketplace at the retail price but some people are trying to gouge the unsuspecting. Doesn't reflect well on the honest sellers in the crowd and makes me wonder who I should trust as a consumer.
Another example is at the suggestion of people on this forum (good suggestion by the way) I started calling some of the bigger train dealers to ask for specific cars I couldn't find. On Monday I called a particular dealer to ask about a car that retails for $95 and was told they don't have any in stock. On Wednesday, the same item comes up on their ebay site for $139 buy it now. Okay, so you are in the retail business and a Lionel dealer but you hold back inventory to make it more scarce and then sell it at a 50% mark up? We aren't talking about collector items here, but modern day cars produced in the last couple of years.
One last example. I went to the Amherst Train Show as was also suggested. Loved it - great experience. I bought a couple of things from some really good people. One of the vendors had boxes of common cars for $5 each. He said he loves it when a kid comes along wanting to buy a car and they rummage through the box to find a little treasure. I thought that was a great idea, but the owner of the table was telling me that he's had other dealers buy his $5 cars and then sell them at their table for $10. Who are these people?
Anyhow, I have found some people I like to buy from - really good experience with Charles Ro and again with Nicholas Smith - and I'm going to stick with them. Did way too much research though finding the right vendors for a product that looks the same coming out of the box no matter where you get it, sometimes at wildly different prices. By the way, I don't mind paying full retail or even a premium for convenience; I just don't like being manipulated.
Okay, so I'm absolutely tempted to hit the buy it now button for the $95 item now listed for $139 because who knows when I'll see that car again? And that's what we all say when we just have to have it. I'm holding off...for now.
I don't do the Bay because of what you wrote although guys claim they get bargains. As you look around and shop you will catch on. I like train shows, this forum and some dealers. I am in to the pre and post war Lionel so the markets differ but the end result is the same. An antique dealer I do business with has an original Lionel car carrier with 4 cars on it at $200. Told him it was way high, you can get them at shows for half that but he saw the high price on the Bay. Hasn't sold it in 9 months. Shop around-part of the fun.
This is the first article I read on my paper copy of the WSJ today riding into the city on the train. It got me all fired up.
Hey OGR staff, you could turn this into a great PR piece by writing a letter to the editor!!! Tell them about how this forum is thriving, smart phones are now used to control all of the great new computer style features, suggest that they attend a WGH show and they would be blown away by the number of young families.
In my opinion, the article was more a commentary on our society. How sad is it that journalists are not capable of writing positive articles. Come on all of you chicken littles. This hobby is better than it's ever been. Just look at what we have now even compared to just ten years ago!!! It awesome!
Just read through this. Someone said "who cares about outsiders." And someone else commented about "vinyl making a comeback." With respect to those kind of comments, I say - Seriously?
Reality check: the context of the WSJ article is that it is a contracting hobby. If "outsiders" don't care about it, no new blood. No new blood = hobby contraction continues. And vinyl comeback? It's simply a form of storage. It's not like music was a dying hobby and now music is making a comeback. Music is an ever-growing, ever-evolving art form. A more analogous comparison to "vinyl making a comeback" (and this isn't analogous) would be like saying trains themselves have a growing audience but the previously discarded material used to make them is now becoming popular again.
Maybe it's better to be in denial or rationalization mode, but I can assure you that not one of my children's classmates - and this is myriad children - has or cares about playing with trains. My siblings live in different states and it's the same thing. It's sad but true. I am doing a father-son project with my sons because I think it's worthwhile. They are much more interested in everything about the project other than the trains. Granted, the DCS command control held their attention for a while, with all the settings. But that was it. And not one of the 30-40 something year old parents I know has any interest either. In fact, whenever any of the people come over and see the 33' layout we're building, and the amazing smoke effects of the VL Big Boy or whatever, they are amazed .... for a minute or two. And then the novelty is over and it's back upstairs. There are three hobby shops within 30 minutes of me. The well stocked trains area will often have a young child there - waiting (with complete disinterest) for grandpa to finish his purchase.
I happen to love toy trains. As a child, they used to call it the greatest hobby and I still believe that. But the times they are a changing.
Kids are funny creatures. My sister's family with 4 boys were living at Cape Kennedy(Cannaveral) at the height of the space launches in the 60s. So what were interested in - the Civil War !! They could watch the launches live but preferred to study the Civil War. Blew my brother-in-laws mind. I had given them my first Lionel set from 1947 and they still have the cars. They wore out the engine I bought to replace the Scout one I wore out. The youngest has two boys and they are in to rail fanning and the Lionels plus some HO. So there are all sorts of possibilities.
The hobby is going away, whether we like it or not. The only reason for the selection of product available now is the number of older hobbyists with disposable income willing to buy the stuff. Once that well dries up, there's going to be a big change, mark my words. I'm not saying model/toy trains will vanish completely- but I do think it will become an ever-smaller niche, with very few manufacturers. For whatever reason, kids today need to be constantly stimulated and seem to have little imagination. Trains running in circles, even those with sounds and features, aren't going to do it. And younger hobbyists don't- and probably never will- have the disposable income of the baby boomers. So there HAS to be a large shift in the hobby overall. Enjoy what we have now, because it's on borrowed time.
A further thought: Back in the 40's and 50's, trains were omnipresent in real-life ; at least, it seemed that way to me living in the greater Pittsburgh area as a boy during those decades.
You could, literally, reach out and touch some of them, for example, as they cut a diagonal path right across the main shopping avenue in McKeesport, PA, on their journeys into and out of the National Tube U.S. Steel Mill. In our homes and in our churches, playgrounds, and schools, up on the hills around the steel mills, we could hear trains - usually steam - roaring their way through their work days and work nights, all along the Monongahela, Youghiogheny, Allegheny, and Ohio rivers.
I am sure contemporary model train hobbyists, who were children during those decades, had similar real-life train experiences throughout the Mid-Atlantic, New England, and Mid-Western areas of the USA, to say the least (of the other parts of the country, I cannot speak, having never been there during those decades, but I have my suppositions.)
Every kid I knew lusted for his own trains, usually Lionel or American Flyer. We were aware HO existed (my father had a few he had hand-assembled,) but it seemed too delicate to bash around on the floor or run around a Christmas trees, crowded-in among the presents.
That was a great many children, typically boys, who are now grown-up and populating this hobby. Such a demographic, with such extensive, and almost nursery-fed experience and interest in trains, will not be repeated. I will affirm and predict that much.
FrankM.
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Who said it was a "waste of time," John G !? (So dramatic.) Nobody said it was dead, just that certain practical considerations - facts of life, as it were - have their profound effect on reality.
If you read the history of model railroading it has been a rough, rocky journey. WW I knocked the Germans out of our market, then the Great Depression, followed closely by WW II then the Korean War and throw in the mix several economic slides but Lionel and others survived. So, I think what is happening today is another market adjustment. I just figured it out, I am running basically(actually one of the originals) that I started with 68 long years ago.
Matt A posted:I can look at them in catalogs and online but when you actually see something in person it makes you want to buy it. There is a certain magic to seeing the trains in person and sometimes being able to handle them. A good example of a great display at the Big E is Charles Ro. Charles Ro had a huge number of locomotives in open boxes on display right where I can see them.
Another thing that turns me away is the price of new locomotives and cars. While I make good money, I will not spend $2000+ for a steam engine, $650 for a diesel engine, $100 for a boxcar ect... I understand that there are people with lots of money that will.
Aside from the manufacturers, I wish I could find a local O gauge club that gave me a warm welcome invite where I can run and learn more about trains.
I agree on seeing the trains in person. I try to purchase as many as I can in person. I've made a couple of purchases online that didn't turn out as expected in the past. Seeing the trains in person is what grabs my attention, as well as the attention of my children. I also agree on the price. I can afford to buy a $100 boxcar but I refuse to do it. I strongly fee that is why O-Gauge is losing popularity. I have plenty of friends in HO scale. They have 5 times the amount of stuff on their layouts as myself....and they've paid less.
I've also been searching for an O-Gauge club in Central PA. I recently visited a club but the layouts were small and conventional. I was looking for a large layout and some technology.
I was at WGH this last weekend. Attendance was 32K. I think that speaks for itself. This hobby isn't going anywhere, and not all children are interested in being plopped down in front of an iPad or XBox. Kids love these trains as they have for over a century. There will always be something about this hobby that captures the imagination.
A few years ago I was in Duncannsville at antique mall on the main drag and there was a large model RR in the other half of the building. It was O gauge Fastrak, I think. There were guys working on it and some worked for NS.
I was thinking about this issue a little more on the way to work today. Is it really dying? The train shows are huge these days. The Greenburg show was filled with children. The TCA show didn't have many children but that's their own fault. When I was growing up in the 90's I knew 2 other young adults that liked trains. I lived in a very populated area in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. There wasn't a lot of interest in trains at the time. However; 20 years later the hobby is flourishing. I really started to get into model railroading when I was 35 and could start to afford O Gauge trains. I dabbled in HO for a while in my early 30's.
mlavender480 posted:The hobby is going away, whether we like it or not. The only reason for the selection of product available now is the number of older hobbyists with disposable income willing to buy the stuff. Once that well dries up, there's going to be a big change, mark my words. I'm not saying model/toy trains will vanish completely- but I do think it will become an ever-smaller niche, with very few manufacturers. For whatever reason, kids today need to be constantly stimulated and seem to have little imagination. Trains running in circles, even those with sounds and features, aren't going to do it. And younger hobbyists don't- and probably never will- have the disposable income of the baby boomers. So there HAS to be a large shift in the hobby overall. Enjoy what we have now, because it's on borrowed time.
I share some of these concerns and it is inevitable that as time goes on, the hobby will get smaller but also far less expensive. Prices are already plunging on P/W and used newer equipment, so the hobby will be affordable to future generations. I believe that as our children reach middle age there may be a resurgence in interest in trains as nostalgia items. Our generation will leave millions of trains behind and they will be rediscovered. Really how long can you keep pushing buttons all day before you look to do something else?
"The speculations of my demise have been greatly exaggerated".
I don't pretend to know it all that's for sure. Only time will tell. If the recent Jan 2016 Amherst Model Train show attended by 20,000 people is any indicator its a good time to be into Model/Toy Trains. I might need to consult my Crystal Ball or Magic 8 ball for further revelations.
"
"The future ain’t what it used to be."
-Yogi Berra.
People like to create an alternative to the real world....whether it is collecting models of cars they will never drive, or models of planes they will never fly, or models of ships they will never navigate. We are creative dreamers and that is a beautiful thing......so unless all dreams are crushed we will continue to create.... there will be no end to model railroading..........
I was not able to access the article, and from the synopsis of the title of this thread, it explains the price increases I've noticed in recent catalogs.
As I see young (and some older) people today totally engrossed in Smart phones and computer IT "stuff" in an age of information overload - much of it hype and hysteria, I cant' help thinking whether those of us who do hands-on hobbies and constructive-type hobbies are relics of the past. The hobby is still fun for me.
NEPA posted:People like to create an alternative to the real world....whether it is collecting models of cars they will never drive, or models of planes they will never fly, or models of ships they will never navigate. We are creative dreamers and that is a beautiful thing......so unless all dreams are crushed we will continue to create.... there will be no end to model railroading..........
A refreshing perspective. I like the positive, cheerful, creative outlook, sir.
FrankM.
It is funny but today so many people are so deep in to the technology world that the ones(me) who make a point of being outside of it are the rebels, non-conformists, weirdos, bucking the system. I like it. This AM I spent some time running part of my pre-war O gauge. Will run more later. Too cold to go out. Colder tomorrow.
This thread reminds me of a three-panel cartoon I saw in one of dad's New Yorker magazines back in the fifties:
First panel - religious zealot standing on a street corner holding a sign, "The World Will End Tomorrow!"
Second panel - same guy, same corner, this time the sign says, "The World Will End Today!"
Third panel - same guy, same corner, this time the sign says, "The World Ended Yesterday!"
Gonna go play with my trains now.
Pete
I have to say that I disagree with the stereotypical bandwagon "kids have no imagination or attention span" comments. Children have an amazing attention span and work ethic - for things in which they are interested. Nothing has changed. Unfortunately, there are a whole lot more interesting options today than mindlessly watching a choo choo go round and round and round. Kids are like sponges constantly thirsting to learn. Cognitive abilities are on the increase. Medically, retirees are going in the opposite direction, so it makes sense from this perspective (like it or not) that 5 year olds and 65+ year olds may share - in some respects - some cognitive similarities.
To try and mitigate the "round and round boredom," we decided in the layout development phase to create a yard. From the books I read while planning - I purposely used books that date back to the 1940s (like Armstrong's) because they took the view that the layout was the primary source of entertainment - a yard adds another dimension of interest. In essence you can play solitaire. I can give my children a card telling them to create a train of 4 NYC cars, 3 UP cars, 5 PRR cars and put them in a certain order. Wow, talk about concentration in trying to solve this puzzle with only three yard tracks (and yes Rich Melvin, a good drill track!).
Peter
aussteve posted:If my economics are correct, we need enough new members each year to step in and consume the dollar value of all the trains and equipment left behind by those who every year pass on or leave the hobby for some other reason. That ignores the sale of new items manufactured each year. There needs to be a one to one replacement of long term hobbyists also in order to maintain the status quo. If those balances are not maintained then the membership of the hobby will shrink along with the prices of the trains. That excludes select pristine pieces which will continue to serve the antique and museum markets.
This comment got me thinking in a way I never really had before. Model trains are sort of an oddity in that they retain their usefulness long after purchase and for generations to come. In other hobbies and forms of entertainment, the product you purchase is consumed over the time you use it, for example those that enjoy building plastic model cars will purchase a kit and paint and whatever other supplies are needed. The kit is built, and that is the fun part, then the model is set on a shelf where it retains value for the original builder. However an assembled model car is of no value to another person that liked to build model cars. With trains, however, the expensive part of the hobby, the engines and rolling stock, is just as useful to the next guy as it was to the original buyer. This doesn't mean that it will retain any kind of dollar value, but rather that the supply of these things is ever increasing. You need someone to buy all the old stuff, and all the new stuff. With all that considered, is there really much room for any kind of mass production of new train items at low costs? I think policies like BTO may just be on to something.
Another thing I see here is the general consensus that video games are bad, and rot children's minds. Or that new fangled technology is bad and is a fad that will pass by. As a member of the club of children that had an atari controller in one hand and a ZW throttle in the other while camped out on the living room floor, I find it hard to say that video games will stop kids from wanting to play with trains. They may be more interested in one than the other, but I expect there were just as many kids that didn't give a hoot about trains before the first video game was made. The thing with the game system is that it is a far better value as a form of entertainment, from the view of your wallet. You have a $300-$400 one time expense for the system, and a top cost of say $70 for a major title game, with most new games in the $20-50 range. Mind you these are not the arcade games of the past, but instead, rather in depth stories that often have dozens in not hundreds of hours of gameplay on play through the game. Man then have options of different characters or story choices that make a second play through of the game an entirely different experience. For the price of one top end locomotive I can purchase enough video games to keep me occupied, and entertained, for many years. There are only 3 games I play with any kind of regularity right now. One is at least 10 years old now, Railroad Tycoon III($30 new)(What can I say, I like trains!). One is a RTS(real time strategy) StarCraftII( $120 for all expansions), and the last is a MMORPG( Massively multiplayer on-line role playing game) World of Warcraft. The last is the most expensive as it is on it's 5th expansion now and has a monthly fee to play of about $14. My total cost there in the 8 years or so I've been playing is about $1700. All told between my games, AND the high end computer I use to play them...(and to do many other things besides play games, mind you.).. I have "invested" under $5000 in the last 10 years. On the other hand I'm cheap and have spent about the same on trains in the same period of time.
The last thing to note is the tech. to put it simply, if it wasn't for my interest in computers and electronics, my fascination with trains would be much less powerful. I like fiddling with things. Give me a toy I can't take apart, and it won't hold my interest long. Give me a stand alone control system that I can not program a computer to speak to, and I will not buy it. On the other hand, if I can start building things that tie all my interests together, it will hold my fascination for hours at a time. I understand it is all some folks need, but I'll get bored to death watching my 2055 going around an oval of track. The building and tinkering is the really fun part for me.
On the general topic of model trains dying off, Sure. in the grand scheme of things there are less folks interested in trans now than there were in it's heyday. There is also going to be a declining population of baby boomers in the future, which are the generation that got old, and bought all the stuff they couldn't had as a kid, so there will be less of a market from the old guys. I expect, however, that the over all interest will stay fairly level. people get into their 30's and get back into trains as things settle down in life. These younger hobbyists can't often afford all the fancy stuff, but they are there, and buying up the used stuff, and the cheap stuff.
Is there probably a decline in the number of people that can afford to drop $2k on a locomotive? Most likely, but I expect the over all number of people into model trains is fairly even, if not growing.
JGL
