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Enthusiasts struggle to keep model railway industry on track

theguardian.com

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Re: Enthusiasts struggle to keep model railway industry on track

#81

Post by ReleaseCandidat »

nlnn wrote: post #21
polka_haunts_us wrote: post #4

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…

I've wondered this about a lot of hobbies, e.g. drumming, pottery, woodworking, anything that needs space or sound insulation. There's a lot you can do at shared spaces, but cost/availability/inconvenience of those is just such a big barrier to entry for many younger people.

Neither drumming nor woodworking (necessarily) needs much space or sound isolation. Of course a "real", big drum set or a panel saw need both ;)

Re: Enthusiasts struggle to keep model railway industry on track

#82

Post by lupusreal »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #73
lupusreal wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honorable mention for OpenTTD

I was going to mention it too. Though after billions of billions made in TT/OpenTTD and whatever imaginable railroad systems it lost most of it's magic for me. Every once in a while I install it, browse and add some mods (FISH of course) and... after I'm on +300% profit each year it starts to get boring.

Yeah, the economy is pretty easy to beat. I've found that using the cargodist option can spice it up a bit, it makes it a bit harder to print money using passenger lines. Nevertheless, the greatest challenge for me is fixing all my own past mistakes.

Re: Enthusiasts struggle to keep model railway industry on track

#83

Post by shagie »

lnrd wrote: post #24

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…

> I think what drew people to model trains was the ability to create and automate your tracks.

The original home of many people who became hackers (old use of the word) was the TMRC at MIT. Tech Model Railroad Club - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tech_Model_Railroad_Club

As told in Steven Levy's Hackers book, there were two groups in the TMRC. There was the group that went on train rides and did meticulous models on top of the track... and there was the systems and powers group that worked with wires and automation (from the telephone company) under the track.

From the Wikipedia article...

> The club was composed of several groups, including those who were interested in building and painting replicas of certain trains with historical and emotional values, those that wanted to do scenery and buildings, those that wanted to run trains on schedules, and those composing the "Signals and Power Subcommittee" who created the circuits that made the trains run. This last group would be among the ones who popularized the term "hacker" among many other slang terms, and who eventually moved on to computers and programming.

> ...

> At the club itself, a semi-automatic control system based on telephone relays was installed by the mid-1950s. It was called the ARRC (Automatic Railroad Running Computer). It could run a train over the entire set of track, in both directions, without manual intervention, throwing switches and powering tracks ahead of the train. A mainframe program was used to compute the path, and all modifications to the layout had to be compatible with this ability.

Re: Enthusiasts struggle to keep model railway industry on track

#84

Post by femto »

kej wrote: post #7
eternityforest wrote: post #6

With the rise of 3D printing and wireless tech, what if we had a modular system of terrain pieces(Like Gridfinity), that could be set up temporarily at events? Every member of a club would only have to bring a small section but you could still do really big layouts

My dad's train club, and most of the others I'm aware of, have had modular set ups for about 40 years. They pick a standard for module sizes and where the track connections need to be, and then everyone can design their own module as they like.

For example: NTRAK

https://nrail.org/NTRAK-Home

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTrak

Re: Enthusiasts struggle to keep model railway industry on track

#86

Post by MPSimmons »

lnrd wrote: post #24

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…

Factorio has definite model-railroad vibes. Including actual functioning train layouts. But nothing beats looking at a running model on a tabletop.

Re: Enthusiasts struggle to keep model railway industry on track

#87

Post by morelisp »

dave333 wrote: post #80
bb123 wrote: post #17

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.

N scale allows a worthwhile layout in a 2ft x 4ft area and requires even less for a switching shelf layout and is relatively cheap.

Plus storage for elements you aren't using, plus work area. A coworker was shocked I could dedicate a ~1.5x4 L desk to my miniature painting. Most 25-30yo people I know here in Berlin would have to choose between this or a partner, purely based on space; or a 1h trip into the city centers.

Re: Enthusiasts struggle to keep model railway industry on track

#88

Post by Animats »

"Model Railroading is Fun!"

Model Railroader magazine used to put that on their cover, perhaps in hopes of convincing people.

They've been acquired by Kalmbach Media, which also owns "Trains", "Garden Railways", etc., along with "Astronomy" and "Discover".

At full scale, the Pacific Locomotive Association, which runs the Niles Canyon Railway, seems to be hanging on. Those operations are high-maintenance and require many hours of volunteer labor.

Re: Enthusiasts struggle to keep model railway industry on track

#89

Post by dbish »

euroderf wrote: post #71
dbish wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids are funny. I’ve seen multiple go through being completely obsessed up to about 5 to losing interest and never looking at a model train again. I think there’s something about that young age that makes them particularly interested, but the likelihood of a long time mode train enthusiast seems to be quite low.

The way you put it, it sounds like a phase, like dinosaurs.

It seems to be from the examples I've had. I wouldn't invest too much into assuming they'll still be in the train hobby in a few years, fun while it lasts though :)
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