[polka_haunts_us]

Funny to see this now. A couple days ago I was on vacation in San Diego and visited the San Diego Model Railroad Museum in Balboa Park and a lot of the traffic flowing through my head about it are all points addressed in the above article:

"Almost everyone working here is quite old"

"The amount of space this takes up is incredible, I wonder how people get into this hobby, I've never lived anywhere where I'd have enough space to set up a model railway long term"

It's kind of a shame too, it was the first time I think I've ever really appreciated the large scale model train installations. When I was younger I'd see them at random historical museums and mostly just think "yeah choo-choo sure does go in a circle haha". I think the San Diego museum did a good job of conveying that it isn't really just about the trains as much as it's about modeling the landscapes and towns the trains actually go through. Viewing it from the perspective of a massive scale diorama of some region really raised my overall appreciation for the whole endeavour.

[hakfoo]

My father was an enthusiast. When we moved into their current house (1988), the builder had the option of a three-car garage or enclosing the third-car section, and that was intended as a railway room. He favoured the large German "LGB" trains, in part bought because they were among the more durable products on the market, so it would be child-resistant for the kids to use. He built the framework and a track plan but never really had the time he wanted to work on it.

I, in turn, moved on to smaller American (HO scale) and British (OO) trains, using the same room, but now find that the tables designed for big 1:22.5 trains have irregularities enough to make 1:87 trackwork unreliable. Will probably need to rework them.

The hobby itself has definitely changed though: Yes, today's modern models are higher quality than a lot of the old "Blue Box" Athearn kits, but they're also $50 instead of $7, and come ready-to-run, so the hobby aspect of building and customizing it is gone. Many models don't even come as an undecorated version anymore, if you wanted the classic "paint it for your own custom railway" narrative. You don't get the same "hours of fun per dollar" out of that side of the hobby anymore.

What's interesting is that there's definitely an opportunity for synergy with the rise of hobby electronics-- the trains have moved from "variable DC on the rails" to "AC with a command bus" and sometimes even Bluetooth, so there's a lot of interesting stuff you could do with computer or microcontroller interfacing. I bought a project for an automatic traffic-signal design using some 555 timers and capacitors, and thought "this is 10 lines of code on a $3 Arduino, for this generation of hobbyists."

Shops are closing-- I make it a point to try to find a model-railway shop and pick up something exotic when I go on holiday, but even pretty big cities don't have one, or it's a billion miles from anywhere. I was sort of saddened to get a note from Hattons (an excellent UK retailer-- surprisingly cheap shipping to the US) that they have started to wind down operations in the last month.

[euroderf]

> Shops are closing-- I make it a point to try to find a model-railway shop and pick up something exotic when I go on holiday, but even pretty big cities don't have one, or it's a billion miles from anywhere.

Berlin has two or three big shops and some smaller ones.

[shiroiuma]

>Shops are closing-- I make it a point to try to find a model-railway shop and pick up something exotic when I go on holiday, but even pretty big cities don't have one

Tokyo has tons of them. They're even in the big, new shopping malls, along with huge dioramas.

[pjc50]

> "The amount of space this takes up is incredible, I wonder how people get into this hobby, I've never lived anywhere where I'd have enough space to set up a model railway long term"

So much "millenials killing X" discourse is just "property prices killing X" in disguise.

[NoZebra120vClip]

My maternal grandfather was a pipe fitter on the railroad, before becoming a defense contractor, and also before contracting mesothelioma and dying when I was 6.

He owned a sizable property in California which included a large home and some attached apartments. They ran a boarding-house for immigrants, and later, my widowed grandmother became a landlady.

I was raised with a fervent love for railroads of all types. I had little engineer togs as a toddler and a professional photoshoot to prove it. We rode around on a scale railroad in the park. But most of all, my grandfather's labor of love was building a model train set for me in an upstairs bedroom.

It was essentially a simple affair; grandpa had built a large plywood table topped with Astroturf. The rails themselves were in a large figure-eight, with not much landscaping or scenery around. We concentrated on the technical bits: a good AC/DC transformer with variable knob, some nice rolling stock with the traditional freight-train assortment of cars, and a locomotive that had that smokestack where you could insert a little tablet and it'd puff out "steam" while it ran.

My sister and I loved that whole setup, and it was like catnip to us in our youth, at least until the Atari 2600 took over. The railroad remained the centerpiece of that room and a focal point of our entertainment for years and years, even after grandpa passed away. It was really a cool thing for an authentic railroad guy to pass that on to his grandchildren.

[jacquesm]

What a fantastic story! Thank you.

[bombcar]

I'm not sure how much of it is space, as I remember even 20-30 years ago the model railroad magazines always had a "how to fit a layout in the space you have" - up to and including elaborate folding layouts that would fit in something not much bigger than a briefcase.

If people really want to do something, they make space/time available for it, even if it involves clubs, etc.

The number of people who want to build models in general is down, I suspect, given that we have so many other things to do with "free time".

[euroderf]

> If people really want to do something, they make space/time available for it

There's other space-saving solutions, like layouts that swing up against the wall (like a Murphy bed), or that can be pulled up against the ceiling. Some handiwork required.

[bombcar]

The only time that museum was filled with kids was the yearly "LEGO Train" exhibit, which I partook of once or twice.

And the people I was with (setting up the exhibit) were mostly younger (at the time) ranging from the 10 or so year old kids of the people leading it to mid 20s - not counting the leaders who were middle aged.

Everyone loved it and the number of visitors in that two week period or whatever it was would rival the total number of visitors the rest of the year.

But LEGO trains are not model trains (my goodness), they're toy trains - a completely and unrespectable thing.

But today I see LEGO themselves referring to the track as "L-gauge": https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/the-orient-express-train-... - which started out as almost a joke and is now getting some pretty serious attention.

If model railroading as a whole wants to survive and thrive, they will need to embrace the "toy" train.

(Lots of these museums are really just "fronts" for the member's hobby, after all, and it gets them out of the house.)

[krupan]

“ But LEGO trains are not model trains (my goodness), they're toy trains - a completely and unrespectable thing.”

I love this condescending sounding distinction, it’s actually very accurate! When I was 12 or 13 I had an uncle that was into model railroading and I thought it looked so fun and cool! Then I started looking into it more and it’s not really (at least to me at that age) because it’s not a toy you take out of the box and play with a 100 different ways. You build a very static and detailed landscape, put your rails down, start the train up, and just sit back and look at it. Where’s the fun in that?

I just got a Lego train set for me and my kids and we’ve already built several different ways, crashed the train and rebuilt parts of multiple tiles, discovered you can program it with the new PoweredUp system, put mini figures on the roof of the cars, etc.

[bombcar]

Model trains descended from toy trains at some point, but the hobby definitely split off decades ago.

What people forget is that the new blood in the hobby comes from the young blood and trying to keep them out doesn't help.

[xattt]

Not only can you change the track around easily, my kids have proven again and again that the track is not necessary and that the train can keep going (and going and going…) without the track.

[stevage]

Yeah, the idea of building a train layout, and then being...stuck with it for 20 years doesn't appeal to me at all.

[nlnn]

I've wondered this about a lot of hobbies, e.g. drumming, pottery, woodworking, anything that needs space or sound insulation.

There's a lot you can do at shared spaces, but cost/availability/inconvenience of those is just such a big barrier to entry for many younger people.

[ghaff]

I also suspect that many of the young people who can afford and are interested in many of these sorts of hobbies have, at least incrementally, tended to shift more urban which makes them impractical absent some shared club/store space. When I first got an apartment after school--and pre-digital photography--I tried doing home processing in a half-bathroom and rapidly concluded that was for the birds. (Even after I got a house, there really wasn't a suitable space and then digital photography came in.)

[ReleaseCandidat]

Neither drumming nor woodworking (necessarily) needs much space or sound isolation. Of course a "real", big drum set or a panel saw need both ;)

[porkbeer]

You just voided your own point. Also, you will absolutely notice your apartment neighbor using a hand saw, or drumming on an electonic kit.

[dehrmann]

Nit: there are electronic drums

[m4rtink]

Maybe its region specific ? There is a brand 270 sqare meter new train layout based on Vienna in Prater, Vienna: https://www.praterwien.com/en/attractions/details/kingdom-of...

And its just a branch of another big layout in Prague: https://www.kralovstvi-zeleznic.cz/en/

Also I know a few people who are into model train and I would not call them old. Also they use quite modern tech (resin 3D priters and fully automated train control).

As for the space issue, they even sorta sved that as well via modular layouts - you build a certain part of a layout that conforms to an interface spec (rail placement at edges, electrical connections) and then you can join other enthusiasts at events where they build massive layouts from these modules in a rented hall somewhere for a couple days.

[ghaff]

It's not just the space although you either have to belong to a club of some sort or have a house with a fair bit of extra room. But stamp and coin collecting is pretty much out of fashion as well.

[AniseAbyss]

Well the hobby began in the UK with the upper middle class.