Full Version: The future of model railroading.
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Please put your age in the poll. This is something I have wondered for some time and I admit I've done no research, but the poll should say alot.

With the popularity of Thomas the tank engine and Chuggington and other train related entertainment, will this cause many kids to become future model railroaders? My son is almost three and the only thoughts he has are about trains. I can only hope this will lead to a future interest in model railroading. It seems alot of older model railroaders probably had a lionel train or some sort of train as a kid that turned into model railroading as an adult. So will todays train related entertainment availalbe to kids and the popularity of it spur future model railroaders where without it this may have been a dying hobby?

P.S. My wife has about had it with the trains. As I type this I have split screen with my son picking train videos on YouTube on the right hand side of the monitor.
I see that I'm not the only good parent out there! Icon_lol

I believe that it definitely can lead in that direction, but I feel that how they are treated will have an enormous role in whether they stick with it or not. I get the impression that many in my generation weren't treated all too well by our elders in our hobby. I can think of more adults who were jerks to me than actively nice growing up. Even my dad's prominence in the 765 group didn't prevent some of the flunkies from being jerks. Oh well. My dad's encouragement helped considerably.

I think that Thomas and Chuggington (Thomas = great, Chuggington = annoying) will help to make it popular at least until junior high, but I don't know what it will do there after. Based on the number of 25-30 year olds who now obsess about GI Joe and Legos, I suspect that the future is bright for our hobby.
Its kind of like football. I hope and assume my son will play football for the lessons he will learn about accomplishing goals through hard work and the rewards that brings and the friendships and memories that are make through it. I played football, my father coached football and my brother-in-law is a head coach at the high school level. We are at games every Friday night in the fall, usually have it on on Saturdays and watch plenty of the NFL. And living in southwestern Pennsylvania and the Ohio Valley, you cannot avoid it. I will encourage him to play, but if he chooses not to I am fine with that. All that said, I feel exactly the same way about me, him and model railroading. I hope he will have an interest in it simply from being around it, but that'll be up to him.
Wow. I was the first to cast my vote in the over 60 crowd.

None of my four children have any interest in model railroading (or any other type of modeling) but I do have one grandson and one great-granddaughter who show promise. Both immediately drag me to the basement where we spend a great deal of their visit. In the summer it's outdoors with the G scale. I encourage them to run the trains and both do well. The grandson is 7 and the great-granddaughter is 4. The four year old still needs to be reminded not to grab everything is sight but that seems to be improving with age.

Tom
FiatFan Wrote:Wow. I was the first to cast my vote in the over 60 crowd.

This poll will be skewed toward the younger generation that uses computers more.
Sure, some children (like my youngest son) might show an interest in trains now. I predict that this interest may come & go over the next few years/decades, but will probably return when they're older & more settled. This is how it worked with me and I think many others.
My Daughters weren't that interested, but in the last year I have been blessed with Three Grandsons !, the oldest is now 8 months.
Now, I just hope I can live long enough to " infect them with the bug " Big Grin Big Grin
I believe that the future of model railroading will take it beyond the representations of the past and the present, and into areas of both special interest - the Civil War, military railroads, WWI military railroads, fortress railroads and specialty railroads - and into the possibilities of railroading in the future, and into fantasy railroading, as well as increasing animation of layout features to make machinery and other features operational.

I feel that the hobby must either expand and keep up with the changing times or it will eventually wither and die due to it's exponentially increasing expense and the changing areas of interest of the MTV and Computerized Gadgetry Generations, which are no longer even aware of much of past history and could care less. Their interests lie with such things as "fighting robots" and electronically controlled dinosaurs. The advent of the microchip and it's subsequent applications, coupled with their shortened attention spans, means that immediate action and gratification dominates their world, while our world is based on long attention spans and delayed gratification, such as required to build fine scale working models and completely scenic a layout. It's going to come down to evolve or die, as LHS's go out of business every year. It's increasingly rare to see younger people in model railroad hobby shops.

I offer some examples:

The remote controlled aircraft field has expanded to include jets and helicopters.

The remote controlled ship field has expanded to included sailing vessels, warships and submarines.

The armor modeling field now includes operational tanks and armored fighting vehicles.

Radio-controlled model cars are now off-road racing machines that actually compete in organized races.

Against this, model railroading has little to offer to those who grew up after patience was considered a key virtue to a hobbyist. Ready-To-Go is the wave of future modeling, and model railroading will have to figure out how to keep up, all the more difficult because the bulk of the modellers do not live where the models are created, making it more difficult to cater to specialized "niche" markets when Chinese factories want large bulk orders.

We may be the last generation of dedicated modelers of our kind.
I don't necessarily believe that having a train set as a kid leads to the hobby as an adult. I had a Bachmann starter set that I did not play with much. The way that I approach the hobby as an adult has more to do with my interest in history than any childhood activity. That, and my first house was only about 15 minutes from the biggest train store in Eastern Ontario.


Andrew
MasonJar Wrote:I don't necessarily believe that having a train set as a kid leads to the hobby as an adult.
If that was the case then kids would want to be teletubbies when they get older.



Model railroading is definitely a challenge, where many wouldn't pick it up since it's not instant gratification. The concept is cool to a lot, but the real work involved is tedious and well the complete opposite of say a video game.
My 8th grade arithmetic teacher would be proud of the bell curve we have doing in the poll.
tomustang Wrote:Model railroading is definitely a challenge, where many wouldn't pick it up since it's not instant gratification. The concept is cool to a lot, but the real work involved is tedious and well the complete opposite of say a video game.

More the reason to get them to spend some time doing it, or at least beg them to. My wife is already aware of my plan of electronics free day one day a week the minute my kids learn how to play a video game. No smart phone for her, no TV, no video pads, etc for one day a week. Go play in the mud like we did as kids.
MountainMan Wrote:The advent of the microchip and it's subsequent applications, coupled with their shortened attention spans, means that immediate action and gratification dominates their world, while our world is based on long attention spans and delayed gratification, such as required to build fine scale working models and completely scenic a layout.

Instant gratification is my middle name. It costs me shipping dollars and makes it hard for the wife to buy me Christmas gifts.
I think it will continue to feature the present, with a look to the recent past. The "end" of the hobby has been predicted since the late 1950's at least. We have mostly older members of the modular club with quite a few guys in their mid 30s - 40s joining. The individual who has a train set as a child and continues into adult hood is probably not the norm. We don't have basements generally in So Cal, so the layout is either in a garage or spare room. I don't know what the situation is in other parts of the country. We also don't have bad weather out here, so there is no reason not to do outdoor activities year round. I suspect that Lance Mindheim's emphasis on building and operating small industrial switching layouts may be more common than not in the future. In fact many members of the modular club don't have space for a layout at home or are limited to a small layout at home so they joined the modular club to be able to run long trains on a large layout, and just have something small at home.

I have no empirical evidence to support the next statement, but I would not be surprised if So. Cal. has more garden railroads per capita than other parts of the country just because a garden railroad can be operated over 300 days a year out here. In an area that receives an average of 13.5 inches of rain per year, and daytime temperatures ranging from a low of the high 50 degrees f to a high of 100 degrees f but only above 85 degrees less than 30 days per year, outdoor garden railways under trees or under a shade structure are reasonable alternatives.
Russ Bellinis Wrote:I think it will continue to feature the present, with a look to the recent past. The "end" of the hobby has been predicted since the late 1950's at least. We have mostly older members of the modular club with quite a few guys in their mid 30s - 40s joining. The individual who has a train set as a child and continues into adult hood is probably not the norm. We don't have basements generally in So Cal, so the layout is either in a garage or spare room. I don't know what the situation is in other parts of the country. We also don't have bad weather out here, so there is no reason not to do outdoor activities year round. I suspect that Lance Mindheim's emphasis on building and operating small industrial switching layouts may be more common than not in the future. In fact many members of the modular club don't have space for a layout at home or are limited to a small layout at home so they joined the modular club to be able to run long trains on a large layout, and just have something small at home.

I have no empirical evidence to support the next statement, but I would not be surprised if So. Cal. has more garden railroads per capita than other parts of the country just because a garden railroad can be operated over 300 days a year out here. In an area that receives an average of 13.5 inches of rain per year, and daytime temperatures ranging from a low of the high 50 degrees f to a high of 100 degrees f but only above 85 degrees less than 30 days per year, outdoor garden railways under trees or under a shade structure are reasonable alternatives.

But...they are an expansive alternative, and unlikely to attract a younger generation of modelers.
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