Another one bites the dust

The Thomas the Tank Engine kids have hit Puberity, Another 15 years and they will hit the hobby full force.

Reply to
the OTHER Mike
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I tried several online inflation calculators to determine the increase in price due to inflation, etc. Using $2.49 in 1956 American dollars gave these results:

$19.07 from

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$18.11 in 2006 dollars from
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$18.72 from
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$17.29 in 2004 dollars from
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The calculator at
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a bit differently. You enter the starting and ending month and year and it tells you how much inflation has occurred. I used Jan. 1956 to July 2007 and got 677.24% Multiplying the original $2.49 by this gives $16.86 in modern dollars.

Reply to
Rick Jones

Thanks for this - should've looked up several sources myself. I can't recall where I got the inflation factor of 15 from ca. 1950 to present, but it was online, too. So much for online reliability. ;-)

One of the problems with the inflation calculators that use gov't numbers is that the "basket of goods" used for calculating the CPI has changed several times.

Personally, I prefer to compare how long it took me to earn the money for a kit back then vs how long it took me when i retired. The difference is astounding. In 1956, I made 1.5 times minimum wage. When I retired, I was earning about 6 times the minimum wage. (NB that in Canada the minimum wages have not kept up with inflation, but they haven;t fallen as far behind as in the US - and in the US many states have no minimum wages.) So in terms of my earning power, nmodel trains have dropped hugely in cost. The same is I suspect true for most people over the last 50 or so years.

Reply to
Wolf Kirchmeir

The perception of increasing prices must surely be increased by Athearn prices having remained fairly constant for thirty years and the likes of Bachmann increasing quality along with prices?

Reply to
Greg Procter

If wages went up at a rate FASTER than inflation, wouldn't that effectively make the price of that kit less today than it was fifty years ago?

For the typical modeler... if that exists.

Reply to
Mark Mathu

Keep that in mind the next time you see the price of an R-T-R car. And you didn't include decals in the costs.

If the bottom line for a model railroader is operating a layout and not just building models, RTRs really aren't that far off the scale. This hobby is big enough to encompass everyone's interests.

Reply to
Mark Mathu

Personally I think the problem is that there are a host of clubs out there that are basically marketting the hobby to the public. The problem is that a lot of these clubs are more interested in running the club instead of running the trains. I love modular railroading but I am not really interested in what it takes to move a module from one location to another.

Just my 2 cents.

Reply to
gantrak

Being 25, I think I can provide useful insight on this, since I am to a large degree guilty of this myself.

Computer games cost $25-50 and last no matter how long I want to play, if they aren't just released under a license like the GPL that acknowledges that software is by definition without scarcity. I don't have to pay another $25-50 because I want to play a new level or throw in addons. User created content is immediately available without scarcity (and thus, without price).

Heck, I live in an apartment. The closest I get to having a model railroad is Auran Trainz, and that gives me enough scenery, space and rolling stock to put damn near any club's layout to shame, only difference being it's tangability.

$0. I pay a cable bill and have a TiVo for a reason. Just takes longer for a release. I have a hard time justifying spending extra money to watch the same crap in a less comfortable environment where I don't have a volume knob, especially given sound editors have seemingly forgotten about normalization and sound quality, instead figuring louder and more distorted is better.

Reply to
Paul Johnson

I've been wondering about this very subject for quite sometime now. I'm

77 and, like a lot of us, have been interested in modelrailroading most of my life. I wonder if some of this was'nt brought about by the sight and sounds of that monsterous engine huffing. puffing, and clanking, pulling that never ending various line of cars roaring down the track. Young generations haven't had to stop at many railroad crossings and wittness that kind of live excitment, and therefor can't relate to it. The only thing compearable is maybe a spacecraft launch and that's on TV! I keep hoping the model manufactures will recognize this, and lower their prices, but unforunately the opposite seems to be happening, ha!

jim shields

Reply to
ach70

On 8/24/2007 8:23 AM snipped-for-privacy@webtv.net spake thus:

Well, according to what you wrote, even manufacturers lowering their prices would have little or no effect, since the problem you stated (at least part of the problem in my view) is that youngsters aren't directly exposed to the excitement of trains blasting by any more. They could give the stuff away and kids would still turn their noses up at it in favor of Playstations, Wiis, Xboxes, etc.

Reply to
David Nebenzahl

It's not like there's fewer railroad crossings now...

Reply to
Paul Johnson

Paul Johnson wrote in news:1188149507.824229.41920 @m37g2000prh.googlegroups.com:

Trains around here tend to run more after dark. Some railroads seem to be making an effort to avoid vehicle traffic.

Puckdropper

Reply to
Puckdropper

As for fewer train crossings around here there are none. In central NH there is not much of Anything. Coal into concord along with Cement. No frieght that I know of north up to Merridith. They tore out the northern line five years ago and the Hobo RR was supposed to get the rail and it just sits off to the side of the rail bed. What they didn't pull up DRED and the snowmobile club removed as one piece with a dozer. The last time I saw a train of anysort moving I was in Manchester NH on the Forth of July getting ready to do a fireworks show. no one in the group even realized there was a active line nearby

Reply to
jeffrey David Miller

And if you look in the cars stopped for the trains, the kids are watching a portable DVD player or playing games on a portable game console.

Reply to
Ken Rice

I think this goes with many people these days. At railroad crossings, I regularly see other drivers (local city bus drivers in particular) reading books or newspapers at the wheel while waiting. I'm usually catching up on paper work or adding stops to my GPS when I'm waiting...

Reply to
Paul Johnson

There are only a few rail crossings here so I still look at the trains, even if the only thing that ever differs is whether they are 4, 8, or 12 car sets! Of course there is the nervous look in the rear view mirror hoping that a following vehicle isn't going to ignore the flashing lights, barrier, stationary vehicles and shunt you onto the track! Tony

Reply to
Tony

But there are probably fewer trains and maybe even fewer tracks. Trains are longer today so that probably equates to fewer ones. And it seems like I'm hearing more about track abandonment than I am new rails being laid down. Even some of the main lines of former rail giants are gone today.

I'd like to see MODEL RAILROADER make available their complete survey results once in a while. It would be interesting to see where (then perhaps be able to figoure out why) there is more or less interest in model railroading. For instance, there are still a ton of crossings and trains in Fostoria, Ohio... does that equate to more interest in model railroading? I don't know.

dlm

Reply to
Dan Merkel

It's just moving to other places

see

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instance...

Does anyone see a future for model railroading?

I have only recently returned to this hobby - my HO stuff was in boxes for 3 decades and most was largely obsolete. My beloved A/F trains from the fifties were rediscovered in a basement and not in such great shape. So I have been working with both simultaneously - very surprised at the changes in the new trains (DCC, ready to roll) and equally amazed at the quantity of trains from our collective past that are commanding such nice prices on eBay.

Still... I don't see any youth in this market. The pages of Model Railroader are filled with beautiful, high-priced equipment that no kid could reasonably afford - assuming that he was interested in trains over video games. The local hobby store stocks little, demands list price while the owner bemoans the loss of business to the internet.

At 54, I think I represent the "tail end" of the baby boomers. When I mention model railroading as a hobby, I get those weird glances. The kids at the train shows appear to be in the company of their grandparents.

The linked article confirms what I suspected must be true... and I can't imagine who will be buying model trains 20 years from now. How much can you do with a "Thomas The Tank Engine" wave of nostalgia?

Ü
Reply to
biff

Any time I have to unexpectedly stop in a traffic lane someplace one would not normally expect stopped or very slow vehicles, I hit the hazard flashers until traffic catches up behind me. I notice this seems to be the norm among professional drivers in this region, when I started doing it I noticed approaching traffic seems to slow down sooner as hazard flashers directly in front of them seems to draw attention to the standstill.

Reply to
Paul Johnson

Heck, I was a little surprised getting back into it after just 10 years.

Ugh. eBay. My absolute last resort of desperation: Spending hours to days to ensure I win the right to pay more for something someone else doesn't want.

Last time I visited the local model rail road club, some of the members were lamenting this.

Seems to be selling train simulators pretty well...about $50 for something that rivals the local club's layouts in an instant. Give it a few years, it wouldn't surprise me to see simulator clubs creating

1:1 virtual layouts the size of British Columbia. Perhaps model railroad makers could embrace the change, since they're not going to be able to compete with that among the casual or new railfans. The simulators also seem to be selling their own third-party generated specialty equipment (like elaborate scenery add-ons, locomotive console replica controllers, etc).

I pulled out my laptop and demo'd TRS2006 for 'em. Biggest question after showing off that was "Gee, why spend time modelling if you can almost have the real thing in an instant?" Not to say that model railroading is better or worse than virtual railroading, it's just generally more expensive at this point to get into model railroading.

Reply to
Paul Johnson

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