51–60 of 137 posts
Taking the train (also applies to the plane), is much less an 'experience' that it was 50 years ago, and so the prestige around these objects also diminish, effectively reducing their value as toys too.
I think what drew people to model trains was the ability to create and automate your tracks. It's an interesting and fun thing to do, basically designing a system and going trough all the small things needed to make it work. I can see how today this itch can be scratched by many different videogames (Factorio, just to give one example), while decades ago it was either model train or nothing much else. I think younger…
Model trains are physically large, so building a layout in my apartment is pretty much impossible. They are extremely expensive, and if you want to get something which can do more than literally run around in a circle you're looking at a $X000 setup cost. The "sexy" part (digitally controlling the trains) seems to be pretty much stuck with poorly-designed protocols from the 80s.
I like trains. I like DIY electronics. I like 3D printing. But given the barrier to entry, I'll just stick with OpenTTD or some kind of Euro Train Simulator game.
My friends are into Warhammer and DIY racing drones. If those hobbies have no trouble attracting younger people, the problem here really isn't young people's interest.
Funny to see this now. A couple days ago I was on vacation in San Diego and visited the San Diego Model Railroad Museum in Balboa Park and a lot of the traffic flowing through my head about it are all points addressed in the above article: "Almost everyone working here is quite old" "The amount of space this takes up is incredible, I wonder how people get into this hobby, I've never lived anywhere where I'd have enou…
The only time that museum was filled with kids was the yearly "LEGO Train" exhibit, which I partook of once or twice. And the people I was with (setting up the exhibit) were mostly younger (at the time) ranging from the 10 or so year old kids of the people leading it to mid 20s - not counting the leaders who were middle aged. Everyone loved it and the number of visitors in that two week period or whatever it was woul…
I love this condescending sounding distinction, it’s actually very accurate! When I was 12 or 13 I had an uncle that was into model railroading and I thought it looked so fun and cool! Then I started looking into it more and it’s not really (at least to me at that age) because it’s not a toy you take out of the box and play with a 100 different ways. You build a very static and detailed landscape, put your rails down, start the train up, and just sit back and look at it. Where’s the fun in that?
I just got a Lego train set for me and my kids and we’ve already built several different ways, crashed the train and rebuilt parts of multiple tiles, discovered you can program it with the new PoweredUp system, put mini figures on the roof of the cars, etc.
I understand why model trains used to be expensive - they had hundreds of handmade parts. But every other toy industry has taken on mass production and most toys can now be produced mostly by machine for cents. Yet still model trains are beyond the budget of most 8 year olds.
Even 40 years ago many opted for N scale because of space constraints. Clubs were almost always HO scale focused, since they had cheap or free accomodation often in semi abandoned rail hangars etc. As for age, it is not just the cost, but also the alienation of the young from messy analog physical dexterity, long low stimulus attention and slow progress in favor of high stimulus instant digital gratification.
> the alienation of the young from messy analog physical dexterity, long low stimulus attention and slow progress I suggest any boomers with this attitude check out what the kids are doing with Gunpla and Warhammer. It's a space issue, not a "stimulus" or "physical dexterity" one.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They mentioned the 'T' scale which I recently came across. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNje4KTLZT4 It is 1:450 scale and half the size of the Z scale. https://www.tgauge.us When describing starter sets, the track area is dimensioned in mm. https://www.tgauge.us/product/452/20/lner-125-hst-train-set > The 120mm loop included in this starter set will cover an area of 253mm x 372mm (10" x 14 3/4").
I don’t have a tabletop to spare in my apartment. We use a folding table for board games so that we can put it away afterwards. Space is at a premium and simulator games take up even less space.
Model trains require a large amount of dedicated indoor space. With millennials and zoomers frozen out of the housing market I expect a large proportion of them simply don't have the room.
I’d be curious how mobility plays into that as well. The YouTubers I see often seem to be well settled in their large-enough-for-the-hobby houses. If you end up moving often, or just _feel_ like you might have to, it’s more difficult to invest time and money into it.
The thing is, I don't expect I'll necessarily have this kind of space forever (and almost certainly not this particular one), so it's hard to justify things like cutting a hole in the side of the house to crane in an industrial lathe. I'm planning on getting more hobbyist-scale stuff (though still space-consuming) with a goal of using it to build my own, smaller, portable workshop (a small lathe, provisions for using it for milling, a selection of cutting tools and the necessary meta-tools to maintain them, a pack-up forge/foundry).
The ultimate dream is something the size of approximately a (possibly large) suitcase or footlocker that can be used to recreate itself (think RepRap but a whole, miniature machine shop), so that I can 1) continue in my hobby even if I have to move into an apartment, and 2) share this with other people by helping them bootstrap something similar. The David A. Gingery book series ("Build Your Own Machine Shop From Scrap") is my inspiration here, though so much of the series would be a lot easier if you could start with some existing machine tools instead of having to do literally all of it from scratch).
How about real trains you can ride on? https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/historic-bay-area-mode... There's another one in the hills above Palo Alto that's open to the public once a year. Now I can't find it online. Anyone? It's not Roaring Camp. This was a real train on private land, with a machine shop and a crew of volunteers. It had a loop of several miles.
A big part of it is funded by doing interactive Polar Express recreation trip/shows complete with singing, dancing, hot cocoa, cookies and a visit by Santa. They do two trips every day and three on weekends from before Thanksgiving to Christmas, each with several hundred passengers. It's a great experience that's pure magic for kids. The whole thing is done with top-notch production value and officially licensed by Disney. Tickets aren't cheap but well-worth the price and always sold-out with long waiting lists. When our kid was that age, getting tickets was challenging enough that we just got a yearly family membership to the museum to ensure priority selection and it became a tradition our kid still talks about every holiday. If you have (or know) kids of that age, check if there's similar holiday train excursions in your area.
We also have several smaller train clubs in the surrounding suburbs and rural areas including a couple who own and run full-sized trains on a few miles of closed track they maintain. There are also several large area parks which host clubs that run smaller "kiddie-style" trains on loops of around a half-mile. These are generally run by volunteers and free/donation. So at least in our area, I'm happy to report that train hobbies seem to be doing pretty well, although I don't know about the home-based scale train end of things.