I have thoughts on what the hobby needs, and what it does not need.
Needs:
Better product availablity, with less preorders. I don't expect preorders to go away, but the more the product can be available when people are ready to buy, the more likely the hobby will grow.
Less product overlap between brands. This ties into my first point. 5 companies fighting over the Big Boy collector market while other modelers can't get products they would buy makes no sense. I have made this point many times before. Look at the product offerings of Athearn and Roundhouse back in the 50's thru the early 80's - almost no overlap. Look at the early days of Spectrum and Proto2000 - no overlap. They all made lots money and the product was readily available.
Only the manufacturers can decide if it makes sense to continue to offer DCC ready (DC) locos. But all DCC/sound locos should be built to be easily backwards compatible by decoder removal or bypass, not by dual mode decoders that sometimes work ok in DC and sometimes not.
Better access to the wealth of information already created about this hobby. A search engine for the MR archive that works, a similar archive for other publications would be really nice.
Some things we don't need:
We don't need a "replacement" for DCC. There will always be alternative methods tried and that's fine. But it is unwise and unlikely that that the NMRA or the industry would or should look to replace DCC.
The HO and N scale hobbies in particular where built on product interchangeablity. DCC has already created a divide in the hobby because even after 25 years it has only reached about 60% useage.
I promise you, if some new system comes along and is pushed hard by the industry, MOST exisiting DCC users will not rush to switch, no matter how much "better" it might be. They have too much invested. New control systems only appeal to new users or those making big changes in their approach to the hobby.
And then you will have a three way divide that will be even more of problem for the industry and hobby.
We don't need another track manufacturer.
We don't need an "era" identification system, if manufacturers are so inclined they can just as easily put the most basic info on the package.
Sheldon
What we need is a good book. There are no good books that go into model railroad design and building that don't get caught up in "I think or my way" and even the experts on a method don't have the answers when things go wrong. I had the later when I was building my last layout with zip texturing, even asked and got responce from the guru at the time, I finally got it figured out myself. In this hobby we seem to get a lot of unscintific recomendations. Take another thing that happened to many, the car storage with bubblewrap makes on cars. Personaly never happened to me but I have seen it, but why?, only theorys exist but we do now no what that black crud is on our engine wheels are. Also things like foam, the tools for both expanded and extruded can be different and they both have differnt propertys and add different enviorments. I use beaded foam but you would not beleive the number of people who try to use a sarrated blade with that stuff wehich leads to beads everywhere etc.
When I first posted in here several years ago I said that HO scale really needs a whole new track system designed for easy installation and lifetime quality.
That need still exists, but it will do me no good now. I have already purchased all the trackage I will ever need.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
A wider range of eras. Right now, if you go into a hobby shop and look at the products, you would think railroads were invented sometime after WW1. The first 100 years of railroading is pretty much ignored.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
Model Railroading, as an industry, needs a simple and easy-to-understand way for newcomers to get involved.
Something better than a train set, well made, and affordable.
Walthers is in the best position to do this, and become the "recruiter" for the hobby, but an enticing package of fun that is reasonably priced and provides the gateway to the hobby for adults is missing.
a crystal ball gazing thread on another forum got me thinking. rather than a thread on what the future of MRing will bring such as dead rail or a replacement for DCC, I'd like to ask what is missing from MRing or needs better products for?
i post this under General Discussion because i assume it includes things other than tech, for example ground foam improved scenery.
so while you might think in terms of what you'd like to see, i'd like to ask why? is it missing from MR, needs improvement, ???
greg - Philadelphia & Reading / Reading