The demise of model railroading…………

[Soo Line fan]

Down boys, I am not referring to present day.

I came across an interesting interview with Nat Polk. His theory of why trains declined back in the 60s was the following:

"The demise of toy trains came when everybody began to chase the $19.95 or $24.95 starter sets of trains from Sears and Montgomery Ward.

In other words, the manufacturers all thought that the starter sets had to sell for $19.95 or $24.95, and they couldn't come up with any kind of quality at that price, so things got worse and worse quality wise.

People had bad quality experiences with them. Even the small storekeepers had bad experiences with them.

You know it all culminated in that Scout set. The Scout set was the final ruination of all the cheap, cheap catalog sets that we all, sadly, had to have."  -Nat Polk 1995

Do you agree or disagree? I would have to agree.

I got one of the infamous Tyco sets for my son and proceeded to build a layout just prior to Tyco going under. If not for my own persistence and the help of a great LHS I would have given up.

I knew lots of people who got one of these from a retailer and then gave up in disgust.

I believe that while Tyco and others were responsible for getting many into the hobby, they drove many out as well.

Jim

[BlueHillsCPR]

Wow.  No I can't say that I agree with that.  My experiences were not the same.  I received a Tyco starter set around 1973 when I was about ten.  For me that Tyco set started what has become a lifelong fascination with Model Railroading.  I had hours of fun with that first set and a 4X8 sheet of plywood...later a cousin gave me an identical set and then I had two!  I still have some of those old sets around here.  Nothing but good memories attached to the old Tyco stuff in my basement.

 

The sets today may be a fine example of what you are suggesting but I sure liked my old Tyco! 

[jrbernier]

  In the early to mid 60's, there were two major issues with model train sales(both scale and tinplate): 

• Early plastic train sets were going for that $20 price point and were cheap.  Varney went downhill fast(pizza cutter flanges/rubber spring blocks), and the AHM stuff introduced us to the 'press-fit' king pins(nothing like loose king pins rolling around in a 'new' train set).
• Slot Cars - The world was changing, and slot cars took over a lot of the 'male' hobby time.  By the late 60's/Early 70's, the slot car craze had gone away, and scale model trains were again on the rise.  The Lionel/American Flyer lines were gone and brought back under several ownerships, with mixed results.

  Right now we are seeing electronic games/computers taking market share away from model trains - Nothing new here.  There will always be cheap train sets(as long as 'big box' stores set a 'price point').  Model train have been in a slide, but DCC has drawn younger folks to the hobby.  This same 'electronic' draw started earlier with RC airplanes/cars, and look how they have grown.  Those teens and 20 year olds will drift away from the hobby(we all seem to fall in love and have 'family' obligations).  And by the time we are 40, we are pulling that stuff out and 'playing' again....

Jim

[jeffrey-wimberly]

I never had any 'cheap' sets as a child. Marklin, Lionel, Bachmann and Mantua. I had a Tenshodo brass steamer that never did anything but short circuit. Didnt own any Tyco stuff until around '79. That's about the time Bachmann slid down the slippery slope to poor quality. I have one of Bachmann's locos that I bought in '77 that had an open-frame motor that was still running last year when I tore it down to shoe-horn in a PPW can motor. I must say that the Tyco stuff was absolute rubbish and I no longer have any of it.

[Doug T]

There may be some truth is what Nat Polk said. But sales dropped off because people bought trains at Sear and Montgomery Wards instead of Nat Polk's hobby shop (either in person or mail order).

There was a lot of really bad cheap stuff comng out in  the discount stores back in the late 50's and early 60's. A lot of people got burned by buying from the discount stores. The discount stores did not do repair work. The local hobby shop didn't want to repair stuff he did not sell.

I believe the biggest hit for model trains then was the "Model Motoring" concept that came out by Aurora. You could have moving electric cars running with your trains. The cars had their own roads (with slots to control them) and were to scale.

Kids like to run trains fast. Fast running trains do not stay on the track on curves. Take the Model Motoring cars and run them as race cars. Racing cars around the track was a lot more enjoyable/exciting to young kids than watching a slow moving train.

[CNJ831]

While I definitely acknowledge Nat's being a hobby authority from his involvement at the retail level, I would look to a number of other factors that most definitely influenced the decline of model/toy trains during the period in question.

First off, Americans were coming out of a deep, late 50's, recession. The cheap trains Nat mentions could have been largely in response to that, as folks were being much more careful with their money. In the post-war euphoria of the early to mid 50's, Lionel, et al, had no problem selling $50-$75 sets in great quantities. By 1959-60, that situation had totally evaporated and Lionel was loosing huge money annually (after seeing record profits less than half a dozen years earlier!).

Likewise, Lionel (for one) had gone from offering largely prototypical, unoffensive, freight cars and locomotives, to issuing increasingly disturbing, gimmicky items, or sets with a downright "dark" implication: nuclear waste, attack missles, exploding rolling stock, etc. These were not well received by a public that recalled the horrors of the recent Second World War and the perceived threats of the new Atomic Age.

Even more damaging was the advent of the Space Age. Kid's heros weren't locomotive engineers any more, nor were their dreams about operating the real thing (steam was dead anyway). Their heroes were astronauts and commercial airline pilots...a far, far cry from those at the controls of lumbering, smoke-belching, locomotives. Trains were looked upon as backward, dirty and an inconvenient method of transportation. Toy trains were largely considered a dinosaur by the public.

The final contributing factor, whose influence still reverberates in the hobby today, was the introduction of slot cars. Like it or not, their appearance on the scene replaced tin-plate trains for perhaps an entire generation of kids and were directly responsible for the hobby's "greying" we've seen over the past 20-30 years. The simple fact is that the fraction of teenage participants in the hobby dropped from 20% to just a few percent between 1956 and 1976.

All these factors contributed to the decline of toy trains and by association, our adult hobby.

CNJ831

[Midnight Railroader]

I don't think the cheapie sets were responsible for the decline in sales.

They were bought mostly for kids, most of whom didn't know any better. Some grew up and kept with the hobby, learning about better products as they went along.

But the kids who grew apart from the "toys"--yet came back later--didn't go buy Tyco sets from Sears when they became "serious' about the hobby.

There have been a lot of societal factors that have drawn kids' attention from trains, not the least of which is the fact that, nowadays, the only impact railroads have on their lives, if any, is to hold them up at a grade crossing. Blaming department stores is to ignore reality.

 

[wjstix]

Having started with a Tyco HO set in 1971, I think the equipment was "OK" but the brass track was what really did me in. If I hadn't picked up an old Lionel train set for $3 and then spent 15 years as a tinplater then hi-railer, I probably would have been out of the hobby within a year or two. It was just impossible to keep trains running on that brass track...but as I recall when new the Tyco 4-6-2 ran pretty well.

[BRAKIE]

It seems to me every decade the pall bearers for model railroading was nearing the gates and the buzzards was begining to circle over the dying but,once proud hobby.

Any time I read a death song from a well known hobby shop owner I take it with a table spoon of salt after all the magic statement was ""The demise of toy trains came when everybody began to chase the $19.95 or $24.95 starter sets of trains from Sears and Montgomery Ward." That should warn the gentle reader that there is personal interest involved.

If memory serves Polk specialized in Lionel.

Also the 60 era saw Brass locomotives from $24.99-89.99..Saw several improvements to include things like the RP25 wheel,KD couplers begining to become the "defacto standard".

To my mind the 60 era was the first "boom" era of model railroading and the dawning of the hobby we have today.

[IRONROOSTER]

I have fond memories of Tyco.  In the early 70's my wife bought me a set for Christmas with the ten wheeler locomotive.  It started me on the hobby.  I added the prairie shortly thereafter.  I had a lot of fun with those running on my Atlas snap track on my first 4x8 layout. 

The Lionel set I bought in the late 70's for my son was a disaster - it never worked right. It was junk.  The locomotive drivers were plastic, the trucks on the freight cars had only one plastic axle/wheels at each end - the other axle position was dummy.  The accessories didn't go together and work.  It became the first and only train I threw away. 

Enjoy

Paul 

[ARTHILL]

I think the main reason peple are not into model trains is because they don't like them as a hooby. They prefer to do something else. Like any real hooby, trains take a huge amunt of time. People like to look at my layout once, but that does not mean they will want to drop all their other time consuming hobbies and spend all that time in the train room.

 I am willing to accept the fact that people avoid trains for the same reason they avoid golf or counted cross stitch, that is not what they like to do.

[Tilden]

I agree with the cheap theory, that's why I'm not in N scale.  In 1973 I purchased a Bachmann Postage Stamp train set.  I could barely get it to run and returned it. 
Had that first experience been positive, or at least better, I would be modeling N scale today.

Tilden

[BRAKIE]

I agree with the cheap theory, that's why I'm not in N scale.  In 1973 I purchased a Bachmann Postage Stamp train set.  I could barely get it to run and returned it. 
Had that first experience been positive, or at least better, I would be modeling N scale today.

Tilden

Beat ya! My first  N Scale train set was from Atlas..Mind you in the mid 60s "serious" modelers thought N Scale was a passing fad and not to be taken seriously.

I ran mine on the kitchen table and ran that little train loop after loop after loop.

[Autobus Prime]

Folks:

Model railroading seems to be a rather active corpse.  People like trains.  What can I say? I can't explain it, either.  Look at Thomas, look at Geotrax, look at Harry Potter. The kids are running more steamers than the PRR had.

Honestly, the modern basic sets aren't all that bad.  Even the cheapie Life-Like sidewinders do pretty much what they are supposed to.  The kids want to see it go, and it goes.  I have found that even the sidewinders, though nothing special, are much more durable and better-looking than the PT Tycos.  Even at that, though, I had a lot of fun with my PT Tycos as a kid, and the unit went back together after a tumble down some stairs. What eventually killed it was probably an attempt to "fix it".  As a youngster, disassembly was my strong point...let's leave it at that.

The plastic-roadbed track systems have solved one problem by allowing track to be solidly and easily connected on the floor.  The major problem with kids' HO are when daddy's fingers are too big to get the thing on the tracks, and he ends up making up new words.  The skill comes with time.  Another problem is that most people don't know how to clean track and wheels, so the train only lasts one season.

Trains don't need to be perfect, from our viewpoint, for kids to like them.  They do have to be fun.  I think a line of reliable operating accessories and cars, included Tyco-style in train sets, would do a lot to make HO sets even more fun.

I had better stop before people start throwing Tyco GG1s...

[jecorbett]

I completely disagree. My first trainset was an American Flyer around 1960 and later my brother and I bought a used 4x8 layout. Eventually I lost interest in trains but got back into it about 1977 when I bought a Model Power trainset. It consisted of a circle of 18" radius brass track, a switch engine that seemed to be a model of no prototype I am aware of, a box car, gondola, and caboose, and of course, a power pack. I knew nothing of quality and this had to be the bottom rung. All I knew is when I put the track together, wired it to the power pack, put the train on the track and turned up the throttle, it went around and around. It was enough to get me hooked and wanting more. I began adding on, learning something about quality while doing so, and eventually built two layouts, one in an apartment and the other in my first home. Now, 30 years later, I am in the process of building the big one in my retirement home. My love affair with model trains goes back to that dinky little trainset I bought 30 years ago. If someone loses interest in model railroading, I doubt it is because of the quality of the trainset they start with. Most novices probably don't appreciate the difference in quality anyway. Either the bug bites them or it doesn't.

[Soo Line fan]

Here is the link to the Nat Polk interview:

http://www.aristocraft.com/articles/nat/natpolk.html 

He has some other interesting comments worth reading.

Jim

[potlatcher]

I think that whether a particular individual has a positive or negative experience with his first toy train set depends largely on what he does when he begins to experience troubles with it.

My grandfather had a 4 x 6 HO layout with mostly TYCO equipment that ran fairly well.  Because I liked his trains, I went out and bought my own train set (an AHM set with their Plymouth switcher, two cars, a caboose and a loop of track).  Then, when I started having problems with the couplers on the locomotive I asked my grandfather for advice.  Naturally, he directed me to the two LHS' in town, where I got some real help from both proprietors and picked up my first copy of MR.  So, when the time came for me to upgrade my locomotive, I already knew where to go.  Once I got that first, nearly indestructable, Athearn geep, there was no turning back for me.

However, if there had been no LHS, I might have given up.  I have heard LHS owners complain about train sets sold at discount stores - both because of their own lost revenue, and because of the number of dads and kids that come in a month after Christmas with a broken engine who then leave in disgust when they learn it can't be fixed (cheaply).  However, there will always be one or two of these kids that decide to stick around and see what they could get instead, and I believe that is where the future of the hobby lies.

If we had the statistics available, we could calculate a ratio of kids that stick with the hobby vs. total kids that get a train set for Christmas.  But, with the declining number of brick-and-mortar shops, where a kid with a broken train can turn for help, advice, and better equipment, that ratio may well be trending down.  Another potential factor, if that ratio is truly dropping, may be the fewer numbers of "Blue Box" locomotives and freight car kits that are available these days.  When the least expensive of the medium quality locomotives is twice the price of the original train set, it can be a tough sell.

I know the topic of dwindling numbers of LHS' (and the trend away from blue box) comes up on this forum constantly, so I don't want to belabor those points.  But, when the day comes that MRRing becomes an internet/mail order hobby only, and there is no opportunity for a budding MRR to get the help he needs now and a friendly demonstration of why that $100 engine is worth the price, that's when the hobby may be in trouble.

Just my 2 cents.

Tom

[SpaceMouse]

Well, three years ago I got a Bachmann Hogwart's Special train set for $24.95 from a close out store. My kid loved it, but the engine lasted only 2 months. But it got me in the hobby and hopefully, my son will join me running trains if I can ever get the switches finished.  

[cwclark]

   The cheap train sets didn't help the hobby, but another thing that I think is a great contributing factor as to why so many get out of the hobby is their own patience (or lack of.)

   I look back at my own experiences and at one point was about to give up on the hobby myself. Nothing came out right. My track soldering was horrible, my scenery looked like something out of Land of the Giants and those old Monty Python cartoon clips, and in general, I didn't know what i was doing at the time nor how to get to the point of quality modeling.

   One thing I did have was patience and perseverance. (If at first you don't succeed, try, try, again.) After my first two layout disasters, I started to read a lot about the hobby, listened to some of the old guys, and eventually learned the techniques to do it. A lot of people are too easily frustrated when things don't go right on the first try and soon after, lose all interest, weither it was a cheap tyco or quality equipment. I think that people fall away from the hobby because of their own demeaner. Either a person is willing to have the patience it takes to model or they don't....chuck

    

[Dave Vollmer]

Hehe....  Our weekly "hobby death" thread...

Fortunately, there are some decent starter sets out there these days.  Now, my father still has an original Athearn train set from the early 60s that was probably top-of-the-line trainset material then.  Not much change from the current day Blue Box items.

Varney, Athearn, MDC, and Mantua seem to have been the products of choice for my Dad in the late 50s into the 60s.  Tyco was certainly a step down in quality.  But it was a step up in affordability.

A friend of mine had a Tyco trainset that he and his dad built a layout around.  It was good kiddie fodder, but he didn't stick with the hobby.  Although I had a few Tyco items, my dad ensured I had better stuff on my layout, and I stuck with the hobby.

Tyco bad?  No, not at all.  Depends on what you're looking for.  Tyco good for the hobby?  Hard to say.  I don't know how many Tyco-ites stuck with the hobby, or how many left in frustration.  Tyco responsible for the decline of the hobby?  Ha!  That's a good one.

I always come back to this; I believe that those with a deep passion for trains and modeling them in miniature will stay with the hobby no matter what the challenge.  Those that are just looking for a hobby ("Hey,maybe I'll try model trains!") are less likely to stick with it.  Many will, no doubt, but I feel it's a deep-seated love of railroading prior to the first train set purchase that makes the model railroader that will rise up beyond the challenges of bad equipment or budget constraints.

[NeO6874]

The kids are running more steamers than the PRR had.

Can you blame them (us)?  Steam is definately better than diesel!  Especially to a kid -- from a kid's PoV, Diesel = big boring box on wheels; whereas steam locos have all those moving bits that you don't exactly know what they do, but they're really (and I mean REALLY) cool to watch. 

I envy those of you lucky enough to have seen a big, breathing, living steam loco going about it's daily work.  The best I can accomplish is old 50's and 60's era video (either put out by the RR's themselves, or shot by railfans) and the amusement park or museum RR's that use steam locos.

[ChrisNH]

I think that the rise of the video game in the 80s marked the real end to train sets as a popular toy as well as a slew of other toys that took a lot more effort to play with. Yeah.. I used the "T" word.. but for purposes of this discussion it fits. I look back and my last Model Railroader as a teen arrived in 1983, the same year I got my own computer (TRS-80 model 1!). My issues start again in 2000.. a 17 year lapse of interest.

I think that the rise of cheap HO train sets didnt help.. they were quite aggravating if you wanted to set up with them on the floor to play with. Lionel and American Flyer had been much better suited to the rug empire. Its too bad the kind of plastic roadbed track we have now was not available then. I know in the 70s I enjoyed my Dad's American Flyer more when visiting my grandparents then I did my own HO set at home. Eventually I got into model trains more seriously but thats due to my grandfather's layout more then the train set..

I think that to interest kids in model trains now you have to lead by example.. they are going to want to participate with a parent (or whatever) in building a model railroad as opposed to playing themselves with a train set. I am sure there are exceptions, but with my son (all of 8 weeks!) I am hoping tio quietly get him interested by just being interested in it myself rather then by trying to flood him with toy train stuff. At least, not so much flooding of stuff!

 

Chris

[secondhandmodeler]

When was this 'hay-day' of model railroading everyone refers to?  As far as I can tell, people have been saying it's declining since it started.

[Autobus Prime]

The kids are running more steamers than the PRR had.

Can you blame them (us)?  Steam is definately better than diesel!  Especially to a kid -- from a kid's PoV, Diesel = big boring box on wheels; whereas steam locos have all those moving bits that you don't exactly know what they do, but they're really (and I mean REALLY) cool to watch. 

I envy those of you lucky enough to have seen a big, breathing, living steam loco going about it's daily work.  The best I can accomplish is old 50's and 60's era video (either put out by the RR's themselves, or shot by railfans) and the amusement park or museum RR's that use steam locos.

NeO:

You won't get any argument from me on that.  I've only seen 3 real live steam engines in action, all in foamer service, and that's enough. The combination of coal smoke and steam oil is powerfully addictive, as is the aura of lost legend.

Diesels are all right, and I like watching them, too, but steam is king.

[MAbruce]

I have no doubt that cheap train sets did their share of harm, but the hobby obviously survived.

I think the greatest current hindrance (not demise) is cost.  Limited runs and advancements in technologies/detail continue to run up the prices.  It leaves me wondering just how close the market is to bearing it all - particularly in the current state (downward trending) of the economy.

 

[andrechapelon]

When was this 'hay-day' of model railroading everyone refers to?  As far as I can tell, people have been saying it's declining since it started.

I think you've pretty well hit the nail on the head. Everything was always better during some golden age (always undefined as to actual time frame) in the past.

But then, I'm a contrarian. I personally believe that the golden age is right now. OTOH, you gotta take what I say with a grain of salt. I invested in Apple Computer when everyone else was at the point of writing it off.

Andre

[BlueHillsCPR]

I invested in Apple Computer when everyone else was at the point of writing it off.

Andre

 

Isn't that still where we are with Apple today!

 Seems like that is where we are with the hobby too...every other day there is a new thread...the dimise...the cost...the quality...it's a wonder anybody just runs trains anymore.

[DavidH]

I agree with the cheap theory, that's why I'm not in N scale.  In 1973 I purchased a Bachmann Postage Stamp train set.  I could barely get it to run and returned it. 
Had that first experience been positive, or at least better, I would be modeling N scale today.

Tilden

Bachmann did not market Postage Stamp Trains.  Aurora did.  They were made by Minitrix and they were definitely not junk.  My F9 loco that I got in 1970 still runs.

 

David

[BRAKIE]

When was this 'hay-day' of model railroading everyone refers to?  As far as I can tell, people have been saying it's declining since it started.

Choose a decade..You will find  a "hay day".Every decade had at least one.

No,I never heard of such till Linn Westcott mention it during the height of the slot car craze of the 60s.

 

 

[R. T. POTEET]

"Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated!"

Model railroading has experienced more fatalities than the hero of an old Saturday matinee serial!

In the 1930s it was the introduction of HO Scale that was going to bury it; after all who could possibly get serious over something as puny as something that only measured a track gauge of 16.5mm. In the 1940s the nemesis was ready-to-run - and that even included brass; one of the members in a club I joined in the 1960s was a mossback dating back to the late '20s who got along fine with HO Scale but who expounded absolute passion that you could not be a serious model railroader without owning a lathe, milling machine, and drill press - and, I might mention, Unimat did not fall into the category of lathe, milling machine, and drill press; serious lathes, milling machines, and drill presses had to weigh at least a couple of hundred pounds apiece! It was also in the 1960s that road racing/model motoring/slot-cars-or-whatever-you-want-to-call-it was tolling model railroading's death knell and was seducing our precious young people away from the hobby and this issue received numerous rants from the editorial ventures of the hobby press. I remember in the late '60s - early '70s there was considerable attention paid to cheap - and supposedly poor quality - train sets. Then along came Pac-Man and the hobby died - or, at least, people put a death watch on it. Today it is microcomputers and game packages and chat rooms and other associated activities, not all of which, unfortunately, are healthy.

All teens are basically interested in three essential food groups: girls, automobiles, and acne. Sooner or later one recognizes that the doorbell is not going to ring and, upon responding, we are going to find - boy, I'm so far out of reality I don't have the slightest idea who today's main squeeze fantasy is  - anyway, he or she ain't gonna be waiting at the door inviting himself or herself in for a little dalliance; few of us are going to wake up and find a Lamborghini parked in our garage; and acne clears itself with time. Somehow or other this hobby always seems to survive and I will predict that it will outlast me!!!!!