Horrible discovery about the cost of the hobby!

[nachoman]

Probably someone has brought this up already ad nauseum, but I just can't keep this knowledge for myself. Model railroading is said to be an expensive hobby. I guess it is true, but then it can be as costly as one wants it to be. A casual bystander might walk into a model railway store and see some some price tags on some of the prettiest models on display, sure, can't say that it's cheap. But what is the part of the hobby where the hidden costs lie? The electricity bill when running your basement empire 24 hours a day? The medical bill from cutting your fingers too often? Well, maybe, but how about the price of the real estate (the 1:1 kind, that is, that you need to build your empire on? Living in Helsinki, I figured that the real estate for a nice trains room of 20 square metres (about 200 square feet) in the suburbs could easily cost around $50000. That buys quite a lot of trains, don't you think? (For your information, my layout is 8 square feet)

I've never been to Europe to experience that for myself, but I do sit and think that it is a blessing to live in North America where the population density is still relatively low. My layout is only 4x8, but takes up the entirety of a spare bedroom. I would imagine for a european to see someone from north america devote a large amount of real estate to a model railroad empire is unimaginable and nearly absurd. On the other hand, I have seen some excellent uses of space from European modelers, and still have operationally viable and interesting plans. The "fiddle yard" concept is especially curious to me. North Americans are so spoiled that many of the layouts built today are around-the-walls types where the track only passes through the scene once .