CNJ831 wrote: snipOn the other side of the coin, the hobby manufacturers, who so many credit (and rightfully so) with a actual knowledge of what is happening in the hobby and where it it's likely to go in the future, have all but totally ignored Thomas items in their product lines. Doesn't that say something to you with regard to how the industry views Thomas' impact on model railroading?
On the other side of the coin, the hobby manufacturers, who so many credit (and rightfully so) with a actual knowledge of what is happening in the hobby and where it it's likely to go in the future, have all but totally ignored Thomas items in their product lines. Doesn't that say something to you with regard to how the industry views Thomas' impact on model railroading?
Actually, there are significant quantities of Thomas product in the stores and in our homes and have been for years. Who would expect a model producer who is vested in scale models to produce Thomas products, certainly not me.
CNJ831 wrote: snipQuite honestly, even the title of this thread is not really proper if the OP was simply looking for opinions as to how modelers felt about Thomas and WGH. It pre-supposes that, first, there is a measurable impact and second, that either will result in hobbyist numbers growing in the future. Neither situation is in evidence.While reading threads consisting of idle speculation may be amusing, never take their content to be of significance or to reflect reality. CNJ831
Quite honestly, even the title of this thread is not really proper if the OP was simply looking for opinions as to how modelers felt about Thomas and WGH. It pre-supposes that, first, there is a measurable impact and second, that either will result in hobbyist numbers growing in the future. Neither situation is in evidence.
While reading threads consisting of idle speculation may be amusing, never take their content to be of significance or to reflect reality.
CNJ831
CNJ831 wrote:Let me also point out that exposure to Thomas in America is by no means a very recent phenomenon...it might be appropriate and enlightening to ask just how many teens here on the forum can honestly claim that the bulk of their interest in the hobby directly sprang from watching Thomas on TV or playing with show-related toys and not some other logical source, like a hobbyist relative or conventional tin-plate trains under the Christmas tree? Now that would be a telling bit of information.
Be careful, Mr. Vulcan, some of us influenced by that first generation of Thomas on Shining Time Station back in the late '80s are already in our 20s...It helped that the stories were much more interesting and narrated intelligently back then, not as if one was talking to a 3 year old.
Anyway, Thomas was a major influence in my early life. Yes, we had an HO scale train running a circle around the Christmas tree (which probably influenced me to model in HO just because that's what we had), but my only exposure to what trains did was Thomas...things like "shunting" cars in a yard, working a mine/quarry, freight drags, branchlines, turntables, a roundhouse...it's all there and an intelligent part of the action in the original stories. Heck, there's even narrow gauge in the mountains. Perhaps more importantly, it showed that trains could be different and interesting (in the variety of steam locos) as opposed to the standardized models that have existed in the latter half of the 20th century. Thomas is the beginning of a journey into history, and is probably why I'm primarily interested in trains, steam locos in particular.
Ray
CNJ831 wrote:... On the other side of the coin, the hobby manufacturers, who so many credit (and rightfully so) with a actual knowledge of what is happening in the hobby and where it it's likely to go in the future, have all but totally ignored Thomas items in their product lines. Doesn't that say something to you with regard to how the industry views Thomas' impact on model railroading?.. CNJ831
...
..
Well Lionel is in O, and Bachmann in HO and Tomix in N.
Also, I find that many hobby store carry Thomas. Here's one I visited in South Florida last month http://www.thehobbysuperstore.com/ He has a large selection of Thomas as well as scale trains and toy trains, including a fair amount of S both scale and American Flyer.
Looks to me like the industry has embraced Thomas.
Enjoy
Paul
Joe, OP means "original Poster".
CNJ, you obviously didn't read my post very carefully. The oldest any child could be who first started watching Thomas at 5 years old is 13. How many 13 year olds are members of this forum? I suspect the number of 13 year old and younger members is very small so you have no sample size to support your assertion.
As for hobby shops not stocking Thomas products, maybe true for a pure scale train shop but general hobby shops have Thomas things in profusion, including entire Thomas electric train sets. I would guess the hobby shop I was in last week has 15% of their floor space devoted to Thomas products.
Again, I wrote that my nieces and nephews ask where Thomas is when I send layout pictures. Their parents are not into model railroading. We live hundreds to thousands of miles apart and none of them have seen my layout in person. The kids only know that Thomas is a train, I have a train, so where's Thomas? This has been repeated by numerous other members here so mine is not an isolated experience. I asked you if you had young child relatives and you never answered. I'm assuming you don't or you would see the same thing as those of us who do. The title of the thread is not "Provide scientific evidence for the effectiveness of WGH compared to Thomas on our growing hobby". It asked for our opinions. Your opinion apparently is you can't have an opinion, even when there's more than cursory evidence to suggest it's true, unless you can document it all as fact. If that was the case, the world would be frozen in place since we will never have all the facts to always make the right conclusions. You go with your best guess based on what facts are available. None of us will know the real story for 10 or 15 years, as I have also previously posted. It's simply my observation that 4 and 5 year olds know about what a train is, something that wasn't inspired by watching WGH DVD's. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that kids, as they grow up, will remember Thomas, and some unknown percentage of them will take a deeper interest in railroading as a result.
A better question for me if I was in the industry is show me some hard evidence that the money I've put into the WGH program has sold one more train. They should be able to do so if this was a properly conducted marketing campaign. I doubt there's any evidence for that either but the industry continues to delude itself on this issue and trumpets WGH as some sort of salvation for the hobby.
UP2CSX wrote: CNJ, you obviously didn't read my post very carefully. The oldest any child could be who first started watching Thomas at 5 years old is 13. How many 13 year olds are members of this forum? I suspect the number of 13 year old and younger members is very small so you have no sample size to support your assertion.
Jim, where did you come up with that figure? Quite a ways upstream I pointed out that Thomas has been on American TV since 1989. That's 18 years ago. A kid of 5 at the outset would now be around 23! Even allowing that it took Thomas 5 or 10 years to catch on with kids, that would make some of those kiddies in their mid to late teens now and certain to be represented on this forum if they existed.
So far we've heard from exactly one individual who indicates he pretty much got his start from Thomas. Hardly what I'd consider a statistically significant "impact".
And I certainly don't claim that Thomas doesn't sell big time either. I just say it doesn't influence and steer kids toward the scale hobby as adults.
All in all, not sure which one grows the hobby more. Every little bit helps and programs such as WGH rely on manufacturers to decide how much it is worth. As long as I can get supplies to build and run a model railroad, and have the ability to do so, I'll keep doing it.
As a side note, has anyone ever wondered what it would be like if the members on this thread were sitting in a coffee shop, having this discussion, would we be loud and passionate, would the other customers look at us as if we were crazy, and would the owner ask us to leave?!
Rick
OK gents,
Here's my spin on things. I grew up with Shining Time Station in the late 80s/early 90s. I liked the show, and even if it was a little hokey (OK, it was really hokey) it was pretty good.
However, in my case, the show itself had little to no influence on my interest in trains. One of my uncles had a Lionel set that I would ALWAYS play with when we visited his house, another uncle has a large collection of American Flyer trains that we would always watch (I wan't allowed to actually use the controls until I was about 12 or 13), and I had yet another uncle who had something, though I'm not entirely sure if it was Lionel or American Flyer, as he only brought it out at christmastime... then they got a dog.
Anyway, it was watching and playing with those trains that got me hooked on model railroading more than Shining Time Station -- I remember asking for a steam locomotive for my train set every birthday and christmas after getting my first "real" train (an HO scale LL or Bachmann set for my 5th birthday) because diesel engines were (are) boring and ugly. As I grew up, I faded in and out of "model" railroading, mostly because I never had any money to get knuckle couplers and the running quality of the locomotives I had was horrendous.
Fast forward from 8th grade to March/April of '06 (about 7 years) - I was bored and pulled out an old copy of "Railroad Tycoon". It was all downhill from there, as I then came across the forums here and earned a little extra spending money over the summer. Then last October, I came across the notice/ad for the NMRA Div 4 show in Berea, OH. I decided to go there and ended up purchasing a switcher and photographs. I dug out the few lengths of surviving track from that original trainset that were in a box at home, a powerpack, cleaned the rails off, and spent nearly the entirity of Thanksgiving break running that little switcher back and forth over about 3' of track.
I now have a terminal casr of MRR Syndrome....
So, as I hope I've been able to get across - it wasn't Thomas the Tank Engine (or Thomas and Friends, or whatever) that got me into model railroading/trains - it was seeing (and being able to play with) the "monster" locomotives and trains that my uncles had set up that really got me interested....
-Dan
Builder of Bowser steam! Railimages Site
My nephew is just 11, and he was given a wooden wind-up non-Thomas train set back about five years ago. When I retired in 04, I saw this set-up on the floor in the den, and he was quite happy to play with it...proud, too, to show me how it worked. This was about four months before I even thought about my now nearly three year tenure in the hobby. I hadn't even purchased a single issue of MR.
Six months later, when I had my first and modest achievement up an running next spring, he was thrilled to operate my Hudson with its DCC capability. I'd say he was interested in trains before this occasion, but he was in hook, line, and sinker when he saw the foam layout and the EZ-track with the J1d running around making chuffs and whistles. Now, with my second layout, he is still hooked, loves what I have done, and is so grateful to play with all my engines when he visits.
I wish I could say that he was first interested in Thomas, and then got what he was given instead but still loved it. It may be exactly what happened, although his Mom, my sister, is very astute and would have gone to some lengths to get him a Thomas of some kind.
Anyway, to get to my point, it is surely a synthesis between a predisposition to like mechanical things, actually watching them work, and seeing what others do with their scale representations of these machines that gathers in the newbies. I saw my first real steam engine when I was about three...probably two in all honesty, and I was oh-so hooked according to my parents. There are any number of posters right here who assert, quite rightly I'm sure, that their kids or their own interest has its provenance in Thomas. If someone made a Thomas layout at a large train show, even in jest, it isn't a stretch by any means to see what must have happened as the day wore on.
If a survey of the general public was done, and they were asked if they've heard of "WGH or Thomas the train, I would wager that the mojority of people out there know who Thomas is. I'm not saying that they will all become model railroaders, but I am saying that Thomas is known, even to people not in this hobby. So some credit needs to be given to the guy for exposing people, mainly children of course, to trains. As far as the other matter goes, I never really knew what WGH was until I saw it in MR magazine. At first I thought it was just MR's new slogan, until I read a little bit more.
CNJ831 wrote:...And I certainly don't claim that Thomas doesn't sell big time either. I just say it doesn't influence and steer kids toward the scale hobby as adults. CNJ831
...And I certainly don't claim that Thomas doesn't sell big time either. I just say it doesn't influence and steer kids toward the scale hobby as adults.
I don't know about this opinion here.
If a kid is into Thomas, and daddy takes him to the hobby shop that devotes a large area to Thomas on a regular basis, then when the kid eventually grows out of the Thomas phase, he may be more likely to go look for more grown up toys like the ones we play with. So in this case, yes, Thomas influenced a kid toward the scale hobby. It won't always be the case but to say otherwise is incorrect as well.
TONY
"If we never take the time, how can we ever have the time." - Merovingian (Matrix Reloaded)
jasperofzeal wrote: CNJ831 wrote:...And I certainly don't claim that Thomas doesn't sell big time either. I just say it doesn't influence and steer kids toward the scale hobby as adults. CNJ831I don't know about this opinion here.If a kid is into Thomas, and daddy takes him to the hobby shop that devotes a large area to Thomas on a regular basis, then when the kid eventually grows out of the Thomas phase, he may be more likely to go look for more grown up toys like the ones we play with. So in this case, yes, Thomas influenced a kid toward the scale hobby. It won't always be the case but to say otherwise is incorrect as well.
And what happens if dad simply takes the kid to Walmart to buy his Thomas stuff, because he can get it a lot cheaper there than at the hobby shop?
CNJ831 wrote: UP2CSX wrote: CNJ, you obviously didn't read my post very carefully. The oldest any child could be who first started watching Thomas at 5 years old is 13. How many 13 year olds are members of this forum? I suspect the number of 13 year old and younger members is very small so you have no sample size to support your assertion. Jim, where did you come up with that figure? Quite a ways upstream I pointed out that Thomas has been on American TV since 1989. That's 18 years ago. A kid of 5 at the outset would now be around 23! Even allowing that it took Thomas 5 or 10 years to catch on with kids, that would make some of those kiddies in their mid to late teens now and certain to be represented on this forum if they existed.CNJ831
I was off in my calculations, as are you. For the sake of simplicity, if the child was born in 1989, he could not be older than 18 in 2007. (2007-1989= 18) He could be older if he started watching Thomas when he was 10 or something like that but 18 seems like a reasonable midpoint. Pretty simple but we both got it wrong. I'll repeat that members even 18 years old and younger area a rare breed here. The fact that one spoke up is a pretty good indication of a representative sample. Statistically significant, no, but, as far I know, we aren't running a controlled experiment here.
UP2CSX wrote: CNJ831 wrote: UP2CSX wrote: CNJ, you obviously didn't read my post very carefully. The oldest any child could be who first started watching Thomas at 5 years old is 13. How many 13 year olds are members of this forum? I suspect the number of 13 year old and younger members is very small so you have no sample size to support your assertion. Jim, where did you come up with that figure? Quite a ways upstream I pointed out that Thomas has been on American TV since 1989. That's 18 years ago. A kid of 5 at the outset would now be around 23! Even allowing that it took Thomas 5 or 10 years to catch on with kids, that would make some of those kiddies in their mid to late teens now and certain to be represented on this forum if they existed.CNJ831I was off in my calculations, as are you. For the sake of simplicity, if the child was born in 1989, he could not be older than 18 in 2007. (2007-1989= 18) He could be older if he started watching Thomas when he was 10 or something like that but 18 seems like a reasonable midpoint. Pretty simple but we both got it wrong. I'll repeat that members even 18 years old and younger area a rare breed here. The fact that one spoke up is a pretty good indication of a representative sample. Statistically significant, no, but, as far I know, we aren't running a controlled experiment here.
No, Jim, my figures are not off. In your post of this morning you stated, "The oldest child who watched Thomas from its inception would now be 13." You thus assumed an age of 5 in 1989. It's been 18 years since then, so the kid would now be 23 years of age. Your post set the age figure, I didn't. If, as you further suggested, the child could be age ten in '89, he'd be approaching entry into the "thirty-something" ranks now! Nevertheless, however you want to look at it, if Thomas was truly having a significant impact, we should be seeing clear evidence of it here by now among at least those hobbyists in their late teens (of which there are quite a number posting here)...and we are not.
Now try to look objectively at Thomas. Thomas' appeal is to the pre-K child. In most cases it is largely a European-styled wooden push toy. It is based on a mythical, essentially TV cartoon character, that in no way resembles any American locomotive nor conveys any air of reality (do trains really converse and have eyes, noses and mouths?). Even a ride behind a 1:1 scale version of Thomas is likely to occur no more than a few times in a very young child's life and can not realistically be considered an important, life long influencing event. It's like claiming that playing with Sponge Bob or Nemo figures as a child will result in a fascination with saltwater aquariums as an adult.
Better be careful about referring to Thomas as European-styled. The Brits can get rather testy about that. Thomas and his gang are based on British prototype to one degree or another. None of the Thomas line looks like anything remotely Continental.
The whole Thomas series stems from the popularity of the late Rev. Wilbert Awdry's tales in Britain which somehow has managed to catch on here. Thomas was originally a series of books and not a television charactert until relatively recently ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_the_Tank_Engine ). I have 3 grandchildren ranging in age from 2 to nearly 7 who are absolutely mad about Thomas and a 4th who's just a tad too young yet. I have also promised the older ones that we'd take a ride on a real train (at a minimum San Jose to Sacramento and return) in the near future. I intend to keep on nurturing that interest in Thomas and real trains (the oldest, a granddaughter, has often sat with me to watch train videos). The kids' interests may wane eventually, but it won't be due to my lack of encouragement.
I'm 61. My interest in trains pre-dates my kindergarten years. I didn't have an electric train until I was 8, but I did have a Marx tinplate windup set. I will admit steam was still around, but there wasn't much else out there to nurture my interest in trains. Neither of my parents encouraged my interest nor did my grandparents. Nonetheless, here I am nearly 6 decades later just as interested as I was as a small child (and hopefully a lot more knowledgeable).
As for Thomas not resembling American locomotives, at this stage in the downfall of American industrial design, neither to the current products of EMD and GE. In any case, who cares? The task is to get kids interested and nurture that interest. I really don't see a heck of a lot of difference going from a Lionel (O gauge) or Bachmann (OO/HO) Thomas setup to scale model railroading as compared to going from other toy trains to scale.
We won't know for a few years, will we? In the meantime, the grandkids get the full court press.
Andre
CNJ831 wrote: jasperofzeal wrote: CNJ831 wrote:...And I certainly don't claim that Thomas doesn't sell big time either. I just say it doesn't influence and steer kids toward the scale hobby as adults. CNJ831I don't know about this opinion here.If a kid is into Thomas, and daddy takes him to the hobby shop that devotes a large area to Thomas on a regular basis, then when the kid eventually grows out of the Thomas phase, he may be more likely to go look for more grown up toys like the ones we play with. So in this case, yes, Thomas influenced a kid toward the scale hobby. It won't always be the case but to say otherwise is incorrect as well.And what happens if dad simply takes the kid to Walmart to buy his Thomas stuff, because he can get it a lot cheaper there than at the hobby shop? CNJ831
Then the kid will grow up with a great appreciation for outsourcing production to China, Malibu cars, saving money, and rude cashiers.
.
I posted earlier stating my belief that playing with Thomas toys has had a significant impact on my two boys, even though they may never become model railroaders. Then, as I gave it more thought, I began to wonder whether Thomas could end up doing more damage than good to the hobby in the long run.
Sure, the younger grade schoolers really get into Thomas, but what happens when they get into Middle School? In an effort to prove how "mature" they are, it seems that kids in that age group can take great pains to reject anything they may have embraced when they were younger. Even worse is how they can treat a schoolmate who still shows an interest in "kids' stuff". I caught enough grief from my classmates twenty seven years ago when I brought copies of MR with me to school; I can't imagine how it might be for a thirteen-year-old today if his friends found a copy of MR or Trains in his locker. Even if that issue had a photo of a modern NS or UP diesel on the cover, it could still result in, "Hey guys! Jimmy likes Thomas the train! Heeey Jimmy, where's Percy?" or worse.
Certainly, some kids who are Thomas fans today may become model railroaders tomorrow. But, couldn't Thomas also become an icon that detractors use to equate model railroading and "playing with trains" and drive away some who otherwise might pursue the hobby? Of course, for every two or three that get scared away, there will be one who sticks to his guns and continues modeling even after, or despite, that kind of ribbing. If this is the case, then maybe the ultimate impact of Thomas might not be in the numbers of new hobbyists, but rather in a smaller core of model railroaders who have become more dedicated to the hobby because of this kind of resistance?
Again, this whole topic is speculative, and many have chimed in with their belief that Thomas will ultimately have a big impact on the hobby. But I think it may be worthwhile to look at other possible outcomes of the Thomas phenomenon.
Tom
potlatcher wrote: Certainly, some kids who are Thomas fans today may become model railroaders tomorrow. But, couldn't Thomas also become an icon that detractors use to equate model railroading and "playing with trains" and drive away some who otherwise might pursue the hobby?
Certainly, some kids who are Thomas fans today may become model railroaders tomorrow. But, couldn't Thomas also become an icon that detractors use to equate model railroading and "playing with trains" and drive away some who otherwise might pursue the hobby?
Tom, this portion of your post, along with a few other of your thoughts, probably comes closer to the truth of Thomas' real impact on young modelers than anything else previously posted on this entire rambling thread. This could also likely come to be the general public's attitude in the years ahead regarding model railroaders in general, having no other common frame of reference to the train hobby beyond Thomas (where once there was at least Lionel, Flyer, etc.).
As we move ever further away from a time when tin-plate Christmas trains and model railroads were accepted as common interests for boys or men, I suspect the public may look also upon adult modelers increasingly as extremely bizarre personalities who play with pre-K childrens' Thomas toys. Just look at how the depiction of us has evolved in films and TV over the past decade or two, from mostly kindly and harmless grandfather-types to the mentally disturbed, the psychotic and even megalomaniacs! This may indeed be a glimpse into Thomas' unintended but ultimate legacy to our hobby.
As I have posted before, I am hardly a fan of the World's Greatest Hobby campaign and certainly don't think ther's any reason to influence people that don't have the passion we do to be part of our hobby, be it model or real trains. I appreciate that others can't understand the big attraction to trains.
However, I am not of any opinion that Thomas the tank engine in any way has influenced or added to our hobby. If anything its the opposite.
CNJ831 wrote:... I suspect the public may look also upon adult modelers increasingly as extremely bizarre personalities who play with pre-K childrens' Thomas toys. Just look at how the depiction of us has evolved in films and TV over the past decade or two, from mostly kindly and harmless grandfather-types to the mentally disturbed, the psychotic and even megalomaniacs! This may indeed be a glimpse into Thomas' unintended but ultimate legacy to our hobby.CNJ831
... I suspect the public may look also upon adult modelers increasingly as extremely bizarre personalities who play with pre-K childrens' Thomas toys. Just look at how the depiction of us has evolved in films and TV over the past decade or two, from mostly kindly and harmless grandfather-types to the mentally disturbed, the psychotic and even megalomaniacs! This may indeed be a glimpse into Thomas' unintended but ultimate legacy to our hobby.
With respect, CNJ, I think many of us are beheld that way now, and you and I have nothing to do with Thomas. It's the fact that we play with trains, intricate and nicely presented in scale depictions though they be. Some folks like real engines...you know, the gassy putt-putt kind on quad frames or at the butt end of big heavy boats. I think we engender smiles, but we also draw some suspicion by virtue of our basement and garage dwelling natures where we twy to make cute widdo twains wun awound cute widdo twacks. (sorry, I had to do that last bit..)
But to be serious, there is hardly more than a passing resemblance between Thomas and what you and I do. Only a true dolt would fail to see the difference at a train show. Thomas is a caricature, whereas model trains are not. They are simply too finely made and require too much else that Thomas doesn't need to get his desired and intended effect, and on his intended audience.
The way I see it, anyway.
-Crandell
selector wrote: But to be serious, there is hardly more than a passing resemblance between Thomas and what you and I do. Only a true dolt would fail to see the difference at a train show. Thomas is a caricature, whereas model trains are not. They are simply too finely made and require too much else that Thomas doesn't need to get his desired and intended effect, and on his intended audience.
Crandell, have you ever had to interact with large cross sections of the general public in recent years, particularly in regard to something that's outside their own lifestyle? Nuff said!
I love playing trains. I don't care what anybody says.
Paul (at 60 and looking forward to his second childhood)
I'm abolutely convinced that the major influence by far are a father, a granddad,an uncle, a nephew,a brother or a friend of the family who are model railroaders or railfans and show the kid the layout, take him railfanning and visit shows.Of course love of trains must be a bit in the genes too. IMHO these factors have a greater impact than either Thomas or WGH promotion.
Nieuweboer wrote: I'm abolutely convinced that the major influence by far are a father, a granddad,an uncle, a nephew,a brother or a friend of the family who are model railroaders or railfans and show the kid the layout, take him railfanning and visit shows.Of course love of trains must be a bit in the genes too. IMHO these factors have a greater impact than either Thomas or WGH promotion.
Thanks for your reply, CNJ. Just so that I am clear, you are inferring that the general public who would wander into a train show because they had little else on their plates that day are unlikely to know the difference between a toy setup and something that you would present at such a venue? They wouldn't be able to distinguish between the Thomas layout and yours with its exceedingly fine fall coloured trees and entirely different representations of trains?
Maybe I need to go back and start reading at the beginning of the thread again. I seem to have lost my focus on this one. Hey, it happens!
This shows that we all have different paths to model railroading. While I received Lionel and Tyco trainsets at various times in my childhood, I had no famility or friends (until later on) that were interested in trains. I don't even remember my dad helping me set up that first 3 rail oval let alone taking me out to see real trains. However we arrive at this particular destination is of itself unique to each of us, even though many share some of the same beginnings.
selector wrote: Thanks for your reply, CNJ. Just so that I am clear, you are inferring that the general public who would wander into a train show because they had little else on their plates that day are unlikely to know the difference between a toy setup and something that you would present at such a venue? They wouldn't be able to distinguish between the Thomas layout and yours with its exceedingly fine fall coloured trees and entirely different representations of trains? Maybe I need to go back and start reading at the beginning of the thread again. I seem to have lost my focus on this one. Hey, it happens! -Crandell
No, I'm just alluding to the level of prejudice and ignorance displayed by much of society today when folks encounter something outside their every day experience, even as supposedly mature adults. How many of us have been at train shows with our layout modules and been seriously asked, "Hey, do you ever crash em on purpose?!" Or try explaining your hobby to the 40-something, beer-guzzling, absolute sports fanatic down the street and see what kind of looks you get.
No, certainly not everybody is like that but today pretty much the only miniature train the man on the street recognizes is Thomas and, to be sure, he will associate you with that image immediately, no matter how good your modeling work may be. And as pointed out by Tom, teens can be particularly harsh and purposely cruel to their schoolmates if their outside interests don't mesh. Human nature, I guess, but it can prove very difficult for kids when their budding interest in trains doesn't seem to fit in with that of their peers and labels them as freaks.
Unfortunately, these threads tend never to arrive at an agreement. I still believe that as long as the manufacturers see money (albiet not much) to be made in new products, the short-term prospects for the hobby remain encouraging. Long term is much harder to predict.
I think that we hobbyists are the most important influence, through friends and family. Campaigns and TV shows are great, but they're transient. Americans have a pretty short attention span. Prolonged exposure (again, via friends and family) is more likely to have an effect than either Thomas or WGH.
My 5-year-old has a friend so obsessed with trains, thanks to Thomas, that his parents are asking me about the "next step," i.e., at what point can they introduce more realstic trains (such as Lionel). But I have no way of knowing if it will stick. Kids outgrow Power Rangers, G.I. Joe, Ninja Turtles, all that stuff... It seems like Thomas could be outgrown just as easily. Who knows.
My hypothesis is that some kids with more than a passing interest in Thomas have a pre-disposition to love trains, rather than it being Thomas that gets them interested in trains. Those would be the potential keepers. I would imagine, realistically, that most children will pass through the Thomas stage unaffected by it, as they will with the other fads.
Modeling the Rio Grande Southern First District circa 1938-1946 in HOn3.
CNJ831 wrote: snipHow many of us have been at train shows with our layout modules and been seriously asked, "Hey, do you ever crash em on purpose?!" Or try explaining your hobby to the 40-something, beer-guzzling, absolute sports fanatic down the street and see what kind of looks you get.No, certainly not everybody is like that but today pretty much the only miniature train the man on the street recognizes is Thomas and, to be sure, he will associate you with that image immediately, no matter how good your modeling work may be. And as pointed out by Tom, teens can be particularly harsh and purposely cruel to their schoolmates if their outside interests don't mesh. Human nature, I guess, but it can prove very difficult for kids when their budding interest in trains doesn't seem to fit in with that of their peers and labels them as freaks.CNJ831
How many of us have been at train shows with our layout modules and been seriously asked, "Hey, do you ever crash em on purpose?!" Or try explaining your hobby to the 40-something, beer-guzzling, absolute sports fanatic down the street and see what kind of looks you get.
CNJ, With some level of respect,
I'd be totally amazed if you do really take them serious when the ask if you crash them intentionally? I remember crashing my Lionels a few times kinda on purpose myself.
And, I am glad I don't live on your street. My neighbors have a quite different interest in my model trains, their children love them, the guys and their wives frequently want to see them and we don't dis each other because we have different interests.
I live on a street where about half the men are married to women who make the money in the household and some of the guys are sure enough Mr. Moms. That means it is probably more progressive than many, yet none of them complain about the 2004 election sticker that is purposely still on my back window.
We have a lot of trainshows in our neck of the woods and if there are any beer drinkers in the crowd, they probably have a DCC throttle in their hands! (NO insult intended, but alot of fellows who post on the internet make remarks about their own beer drinking.) The crowds are pretty tame, even well behaved from what I see. Especially the Kids who, though usually quite excited are on 'best behavior from what I see.
As for peer pressure at school, it has been over 40 since I walked the halls each day and there was peer pressure back then, to smoke, drink and raise cain. So what is new? The guns maybe. Certainly there were knives, bullies and tire irons. The parents I know, and there are alot of them around me, want to encourage their children to grow up with good values, a sound education and broad interests. Thomas is a healthy, positive image, and as the young man said in an earlier post, it introduced him to concepts of round houses, shuttling cars and other things that Andy Sperandeo and Tony Koester have been preaching with arguably less success.
BTW, I'd be really concerned with about my child if he or she was overly obsessed with any single thing, including Thomas the Tank Engine.
My 2 cents, never worth a penny more.
Joe
Fact is that my reality is way different than your, CNJ, and I do get out of the house and the basement!
Based on my own observations, Thomas and the recent "Polar Express" book and movie are very popular with parents who have kids (the kids don't have the resources to spend money, it's the parents who set the market trends, not the kids per se).
I went to the WGH show in Portland Oregon last year, and it was packed out. The sections with Thomas on display were packed to the walls with parents and pre-teen kids. You could barely get through the aisles they were so packed in these areas of the show.
For the last two winters the local Mt Hood excursion railway has had a "Polar Express" train running from Thanksgiving to Christmas. They encourage the parents to bring their kids dressed in "jammies", serve hot chocolate on the train, and the kids meet Santa Claus at the "North Pole" end of the run. These excursions were sold out both years in just a few days.
At mall shows where the local modular groups display, the parents and children are often two and three layers deep around the modular display.
It seems there remains a strong fascination with model trains among the public for parents with small children. But what does this really mean for the scale model railroading hobby?
1. How many of those kids turn into model railroaders in their teen years? This is hard to judge because teens typically are money-poor and as a result won't have a huge influence on hobby market sales.
2. How many of these kids go on into their early adult years as an active model railroader? Not very many, according to NMRA and industry statistics. Most young adult model railroaders leave the hobby in their 20s because of the financial and time pressures of college, starting a family, and trying to spin up a career. Those that stick it out in the hobby through these years will tend to be few in number, again not reflecting a large segment of the hobby market.
3. How many of the young adults who left the hobby in their 20s will return to the hobby in their late 30s, 40s, or 50s? NMRA and industry studies show the typical hobbyist pattern is to leave the hobby in early adulthood and to return to it later in life. Upon returning to the hobby, this is when people have the larger sums they can spend, so THIS is the group that will most heavily influence the market.
Since we are looking at up to 40 years before a model railroader spawned in childhood will finally begin to have the resources to devote to the hobby, the real test of how many hobbyists have been spawned by Thomas (most popular in the 1990s) or Polar Express (popular in the early 2000s) will be how well the scale model railroading market is doing by 2030 to 2040.
This also means the hobbyists who are influencing the hobby market right now were mostly spawned in the 1960s and earlier -- which is known to have been the golden era of the trainset, of westerns (every town had a train station), and the like.
The hobby seems to be doing okay right now, and even experiencing a slight resurgence. But next up will be those youngsters spawned into the hobby during the 1970s and 1980s as they reach the prime hobby purchasing age of the 40s and 50s.
Countering all this is the rise of the internet. The internet has given hobbies once thought all but dead (like slot cars) a new lease on life as hobbyists around the world can now communicate and sell to each other in a way not possible even a decade ago. Even if the model railroading hobby shrinks in the next couple of decades, my guess is the internet will help keep it from shrinking as much as it might otherwise do.
Reality is no one really knows. The NMRA and the industry have numbers to tell you what's happening right now, and what's happened in the past. But as to the future, it's largely a crystal-ball gaze. There are some well-reasoned guesses, but then well-reasoned predictions of the future have been wrong before.
Joe Fugate Modeling the 1980s SP Siskiyou Line in southern Oregon