01-27-2012, 02:20 PM
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 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.