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.
Enthusiasts struggle to keep model railway industry on track
91–100 of 137 posts
Re: Enthusiasts struggle to keep model railway industry on track
#92As a younger person who in theory is interested in model railways, the sad truth is that the drawbacks simply outweigh the benefits. 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 cont…
I've recently been designing a custom implementation of a DCC controller for a new model railroad I'm setting up - what don't you like about the protocol?
I find the protocol fascinating in that the data signal is combined with the power, so you just run everything over the two tracks.
Further, a transmitter is just a simple H-bridge that costs pennies...
Re: Enthusiasts struggle to keep model railway industry on track
#93I 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…
Seems to gloss over the physical space required to have a model train. A video game can come in many sizes from phones to consoles and is much more accessible and even portable.
Growing up, we had a 4'x8' sheet of plywood covered in the fake grass and then decked out with structures, trees, people, cars, and all sorts of stuff. It was a lot of fun setting it up, building the models, and deciding on a track layout. Took weeks building it. It took days to get bored with it. For some reason, we thought it a good idea to tack down the tracks for better stability, but it made it a nightmare to rearrange the tracks. However, it stayed like that for years and from time to time as I got older would fire it up and quickly bore of it again.
Re: Enthusiasts struggle to keep model railway industry on track
#94Son is into R/C Drifting. He's 21 and throws a considereable amount of money at it (though not crazy when you consider what Records/Cassettes/CDs cost in the 80's) There's a crazy national involvement and it's pretty common to see two dozen guys watching the cars drift around the circut on Thursdays-Sunday nights. The cars are crazy with LiPO amperages and full suspensions, active cooling, and programmable throttle p…
I'm glad R/C seems to be shifting to meet a younger demographic in a way that model railroading hasn't been able to. I recently bought an ARRMA and I'm blown away by how powerful it is compared to the Tamiya and HPI stuff I grew up with. It's fun to see the new R/C sports (drifting) and twists on existing hobbies (FPV becoming a new focus in R/C planes).
Re: Enthusiasts struggle to keep model railway industry on track
#95I 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…
Yes, and if you're really into the physical aspect, there are all kinds of robotics kits and lego and such that can give you that.
Re: Enthusiasts struggle to keep model railway industry on track
#96Earlier 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 basic economy of TT was always disappointingly easy.
Re: Enthusiasts struggle to keep model railway industry on track
#97Setting up the old model train set surely must be on a lot of folk's bucket list. I for one definitely will set mine up one more time when I'm retired. Although I have never done that as an adult. But I think it's such a fantastic hobby to have.
Everyone who prefers a virtual alternative in form of a video game is nuts! I cannot even see much similarity between the two, unless creating and automating tracks is really what you find interesting about the hobby (as lnrd hypothesizes). To me, that is the least interesting thing about it. It's not about creating a run of tracks, it's about creating a corner of the world. The scenery, the (long) building process, the hidden gems and stories... For many, it's also about being in a club, the community... you know, like, in the old sense of the word, not the internet sense of the word.
The article makes a good point that we should actually be living in a golden age of model building. Twenty, thirty years ago, it was much harder to come by supplies while in the globalized world we live in today, everything is just an online order away. But of course that also makes it much harder for your local shop to survive.
Also: youtube channel tip: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjRkUtHQ774mTg1vrQ6uA5A
Re: Enthusiasts struggle to keep model railway industry on track
#98Model 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 don't think it needs to be dedicated indoor space - at least in my bubble, it's not uncommon to do temporary layouts on floors.
It's obviously very focused on the railroad part, but turning your apartment into a model railroad for a few days every once in a while means you can use a lot more space. Outdoor spaces can be used as well.
Re: Enthusiasts struggle to keep model railway industry on track
#99How long until we have model networking? tiny racks filled with tiny Cisco routers. with tiny cables management and tiny blinking LEDs everywhere. You can even add buttons to simulate solar storms on your tiny microwave antena model which would change how the blinking lights work on the tiny routers. And if you want to splurge like some train modelers do with fake grass and such you can maybe even go for the middle m…
I had a lot of fun with my capstone project on GNS3
Re: Enthusiasts struggle to keep model railway industry on track
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
“ But LEGO trains are not model trains (my goodness), they're toy trains - a completely and unrespectable thing.” 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…
Yeah, the idea of building a train layout, and then being...stuck with it for 20 years doesn't appeal to me at all.