How many modellers in the UK?

I suspect that a good guess would be the total UK circulation of Railway Modeller, Continental Modeller, one of the other main stream railway model mags plus the circulation of MRJ - any over lap between them will help to error correct those who don't buy any magazine.

As for actual numbers - do your own research, you might be competing against people I know! :~)

Judging by the sheer volume of magazines on cars and/or motorbikes, I would expect those to be far more popular pastimes than model railways.

Kevin Martin

Not really, there is an awful lot of "dreamers" (and possibly a fare few traders) who buy those Boat, Car and Motorbike type mags, OTOH I doubt many "dreamers" buy 'hobby' mags.

I wonder what the ratio of buyers of magazines to "hobbyists" is? By that I mean, taking Land Rovers for example, there are four monthly magazines dedicated to the marque, plus other general "4x4" mags. Some readers probably don't own one at all, a large number of readers have one or two but don't do any work on them themselves as they are essentials for transport rather than a hobby, some readers spend hobby time doing things to them, and a large group don't buy the mags but spend a lot of time working on them (I'll call them hobbyists for want of a better name) and the competing/using them off-road.

I'd imagine model railway mags are similar - though I'd venture the proportion of readers who don't do any modelling is rather higher, but the there isn't the "essential" element - no one *needs* a model railway.

What I'm getting at is that magazine sales may be actually be unrepresentative of the hobby as a whole, but soley indicate magazine readership.

Personaly, I'd expect that there are rather more railway modellers (including collectors) than the general public would think, but rather less than railway modellers would think. I'd imagine Hornby et al have quite good data on this, but they'd be unlikely to publish for obvious reasons. Perhaps club memberships may be indicative?

Cheers Richard

"Jerry" wrote

Hmm, I wouldn't want to bet either way, but my customer base suggests that

I've also got a friend who has been a member of the Gauge-O-Guild for years and is an avid reader of their 'Gazette', but has no gauge-O equipment and acknowledges he's unlikely to ever achieve his 'dream' of 7mm scale modelling.

John.

Thanks for the feedback. It is a tad difficult to get a handle on this but it would appear that the figure for the UK is close to a million, with a core of regulars and a lot of one-off train set types. As to competing with anyone already selling stuff the only firm selling anything like this is in the US, if it comes off Javis may have a new (cheap) product to offer. My sister suggested I give the idea to an ethical company to develop, and provided a list of same. So far I have had an e-mail asking for more details but as I understand it all it takes from their end is a phone call to change the spec of an existing product slightly. As I said if anything comes of it I'll post the details, if not I'll post the idea in case anyone else fancies suggesting it to a company.

Regards

Mike

Sounds rather high to me, about 1 in 60 people in the UK, which includes females. Now I don't know how many women & girl modellers you know (I can think of two I know of personally), but the vast majority show absolutely no interest at all. Which leaves 1 in 30 males.

But what would I know, since I'm in Australia. :-)

Kevin Martin

I'd be surprised if it was more than 100,000.

(kim)

Hi Mike

I assume this 'item' would be adaptable across all scales and only suitable for model makers not the likes of 'Uncle Bert' who always buys his grandson an item for his model railway or someone who simply buyers and runs all RTR kit.

You will also need to take into account the final retail price as not all model makers are as rich as you Mike :-)

I don't know if anyone has an average club size but this link has a fair number of clubs with web sites.

Chris

Yes, I'd agree with a figure of around 100K, certainly nothjing like a million. Railway Modeller's circulation is around 50K these days from memory, Model Rail's is about 33K - the only two with figures in the public domain IIRC. So add a bit more on for the other mags ( and allowing for folks who buy mor ethan one) then 100K sounds likely.

Useable from N to O, 70p a packet (equivalent to about £5 of the current commercial alternative), which is why I was interested in the idea!

Thanks for the info. The million estimate includes all the people who bought 'train sets' in the last couple of years as well as the railway modellers. Based in part on the number of container loads of related materials being imported, a somewhat iffy statistic but the best I could tease out of the data I could get at.

Regards

Mike

Depends on the number of people reading an individual copy, and people who buy more than one title too. My Dad buys both Model Rail and Railway Modeller (he'd considered cancelling the latter but it's improved recently) and I read the copies he buys - two modellers for each issue.

You forgot the line up of readers in W.H. Smiths

Yes, I was assuming that the number of people who buy more than one magazine would be roughly equivalent to the WH Smith element and so cancel each other out. ish..

What about finescale modellers, who wouldn't be seen dead reading Railway Modeller, Model Rail and the like?

Good lord! Are there really people who think like that? The modelling world never ceases to amaze.........

Easily fixed, what is the circulation of the MRJ?

Kevin Martin

Wouldn't they usually be reading the in-house magazine of whatever association they're a member of? Off the top of my head, every finescale layout I've seen on the North-East exhibition circuit has had a 'members of the Association fitted to it.

I actually rather like Model Rail, even if there is often too much Great Western in it. ;-)