Edit post

Edit your reply below.

Post Body
Enter your post below.
John and David, That sort of puts things in perspective to me. A person really had to make quite the monetary outlay in the 50's to get into this hobby. I hope P2K, Kato etc. don't come with an engine that costs a week's pay - unless it was 12 inches to the foot scale! David - intesting statement at the end of your post. "you could buy locomotive kits in sections, a section probably gave you a month's building." I posted something similar to that somewhere around here. Someone wrote in MR years ago about the "play value" of our hobby dollars vs other hobbies. The general idea was that for the same price, of say a night of bowling, you could by a craftsman kit. The night of bowling lasted a few yours, the kit, maybe a week or month. The dollar per hour was much lower in our hobby. I am currently working on a micro engineering city viaduct kit. At the rate I'm going, the construction of the whole thing will come out to be about $1.00 per hour, not bad. This isn't counting the number of hours it will provide trackage once it's installed on the layout. While I have nothing against the current trend of RTR products, I do think such things lead to a perception of higher prices. You buy a RTR engine for, say $100.00. It's out of the box, on the layout in about 5 minutes. It looks great, runs great, wow, I need another. The next day another $100.00 egine etc etc. A 30.00 Athearn blue box. Assemble it. Add grab irons and other detail parts. Tweak the drive train for better running. Weather it. Add the decoder. Even if the total cost is the same, you probably spent 2 or 3 evenings working on the engine. Besides the immense satisfaction of seeing a blue box diesel look and perform darn near the same as those RTR engines (ok, maybe I'm the only one that gets that sort of satisfaction), the dollar per hour cost of the hobby is much lower. Just my opinion.
Tags (Optional)
Tags are keywords that get attached to your post. They are used to categorize your submission and make it easier to search for. To add tags to your post type a tag into the box below and click the "Add Tag" button.
Add Tag

Update Reply

Subscriber & Member Login

Login, or register today to interact in our online community, comment on articles, receive our newsletter, manage your account online and more!

Model Railroader Newsletter See all

Sign up for our FREE e-newsletter and get model railroad news in your inbox!

Subscriber & Member Login

Edit post

Post Body

Tags (Optional)

Subscriber & Member Login

Users Online

Search the Community