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"Taken together, there may be more printed material today than at any point in the hobby ... certainly much more than in the golden age of the 50s and 60s" true, but the population has, what, doubled? tripled? quadrupled? Anyway, from the whole discussion I still havent found how the problem should be defined, let alone solved. "Decline of the hobby" does make sense if understood as 'individualisation', with Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone" about the demise of American civic society in the back of my head. He does make a very strong case that social capital has been evaporating ever since the pre-boomer generation started to pass away and this includes anything happening in club-setting. Broadly speaking. But model rr in club setting does not equal 'the hobby', (which it doesnt) what exactly should be the problem? Strictly speaking I think the only units we need to know is the development over time of the turnaround of retailers - and / or manufacturers and then link that figure to population growth and the size of this niche industry as percentage of the leisure industry as a whole. And it would make complete sense to me to assume a decline of this niche in % of leisure money spent, b/c of all the new competition from computer games, mobile phones, skate boards, music, clothes, holidays, etc. Unless someone shows me equally expensive AND important ways to spend leisure money that have disappeared alltogether since, say, the '30's? I think it's common sense to assume that _per capita_ less is being spent on model rr's. But luckily, while it may or may not be less, it still, apparently, is more than enough! Or are we still desperately trying to upgrade 1970's Athearns? No I'm buying one Kadee boxcar for the price of a weeks groceries! And that's only a boxcar! A LHS owner told me that he sold 5 Marklin Big Boys last Holiday season. So while he is still comfortably in business, the number of LHS's or probably even the total value of the industry has not kept pace with the population growth and the growth of that populatioln's budget. So, yes there's a relative decline, but no it's not life threatening as yet, as long as the nich keeps upgrading itself and mosty importantly its customers' budgets.
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