Is there life after the Baby Boomers are gone.??????

[vsmith]

Being a Baby Boom tailender - like "More to restore" born in the 60's- I used to feel like the youngest guy in the room at every train show, but lately I've noticed quite a few kids and families at the local shows over the last couple of years. I think thats a good sign. I think Thomas continued success on TV and in the toyworld has done more to promote the hobby to youngsters than the"WGH" promo could ever reach. While not all will continue a few will carry it all their lives.

There is a real danger that as the majority of hobbiests ages, that the manufacturers will continue the niche marketing trends pricing out most younger hobbiest. While I have noticed that in G scale starter item prices have come down over the last 10 years, it seams that in HO and particularly O that the BMW principal reigns supreme-thats "Bring Money With-you". When I got reinterested in the hobby a few years ago and was considering scales I quickly found O, 2 or 3 rail, to be absolutley out of the question. A bit too expensive for even my middle class income level to get even a resonably well detailed scale model. Meanwhile I started in G where I now have a large roster of engines (20+)for the same money that would have only got me 8 or 10 scale model O engines. Granted if you look at just the prices, HO and G are relative pricewise, but consider that G is 8 times the physical volumn of HO and about 1/100 the marketshare, and you wonder just where is all that money for that $200 HO engine is going? So price may turn out to be the biggest deterence to the future of this hobby as far as I'm concern, not a depletion of baby boomers.

[More to restore]

I am a child of a baby boomer (born in 66). When I went to high school many of friends also owned toy trains (mostly Marklin over here) and we liked to play with it.
If I now visit an ordinary toy shop there are no trains anymore, because the current kids are less interested than we were. We have to go to specialised hobby shops or Ebay to get or trains nowadays.
You also notice it when you visit train shows: most of the public is 50+, there are only a few kids coming with daddy.
My children like my trains, but they are still too young to play with them alone. But I have already given them the train-addiction-disease. So, yes there will train-addicts in the future, but less than now.

[Anonymous]

I believe those of us over the age of 55 are whats driving the toy train industry. For it to keep thriving it would largly depend on a younger generation to keep the boilers going. I was wondering,how many of us older guys got our kids interested in trains the way we are.I have two grown up kids that care less about trains.They think there nice,but that's it! Most of you might say it won't matter to us when were'r gone,but I'm sure the toy train guys have to wonder how long before the bubble burst.