Posing another question about the hobby.

[Russ Bellinis]

Has the hobby moved from modeling to buying models?
Charlie

I think it has pretty much gone that way. If you are going to have scenery on your layout, you either must build it yourself or hire a professional to build your layout. The same thing is true for track laying, but my local hobby shop has almost stopped stocking kits. They have a few Athearn Blue Box kits on the shelf, but most of their models are r-t-r. They will special order from any of the distributors, but they don't stock kits because they just don't have a market for them. Our society has become a "microwave society" now it would seem and most people don't want to build anything. I am glad that many of the manufacturers still offer kits. I went to a seminar put on by Intermountain at the NMRA convention in Anaheim, and was glad to hear that Intermountain offers any of their cars as undecorated kits. I think they also offer any of their diesels the same way. I think the only thing they don't offer in kit form would be their steam engines. The reason that kits are offered in undecorated only, is that most modelers who would put together an Intermountain kit, will also want to paint and decal it themselves. There is a lot more work involved in building an Intermountain car kit than an Athearn blue box kit. The exception to the lack of kits is in the area of structures in ho scale. I don't remember seeing n-scale structure kits there, but I don't model in n-scale so I don't pay a lot of attention to wat is available in n. Most of their ho scale structures are kits.