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The gloom-and-doom crowd, er, individual has been at it again. Declines in MR readership and the aging of MR readers and NMRA members are cited as the only available evidence on the state of the hobby. But here's a thought. What if the hobby is only changing and diversifying, not in decline? It's true that the "US-born white male baby boomer scratchbuilder" segment will eventually pass on. To those that are in this segment, perhaps that means the hobby is in trouble, since so many boomers view their generation as the center of the universe. I know I swore I never get sucked into this dreary discussion again, but I thought I would post some positive evidence since the old negative nellies have started their rap. Here's one piece of evidence, among many, that suggests things are not quite so bad. Looking at the Index of Magazines found on this site, it's easy to count how many different magazine titles are being published for each year. Though I am supposed to be working on a research paper (returning college student), I spent a few minutes tunring this year by year count into a graph. [IMG]http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i236/alco_fan/MRmagtitles.jpg[/IMG] This count includes general purpose model magazines (MR, RMC, et al), prototype magazines (Trains, CTC Board, et al), and scale-specific magazines. I did not include the recent proliferations of Historical Society and specialized SIG publications, because it would have made the numbers look amazingly skewed to the present and some of their circulations are small (though not all, of course). Viewed in this way, the real low point of the hobby was the Sixties (only 4 titles in some years). The last few years are the highpoint in terms of number of titles (21) and diversity. Maybe some of the loss in MR circulation is from the competition from so many other magazines, including other Kalmbach titles that didn't exist until the 80s (such as Garden Railways and Classic Toy Trains). Just one of a number of data points that suggest that the hobby is certainly changing, but is not in any danger of fading away. Jon
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