Up until about 5 years ago the only alternative was to buy kits. I won't
say build because most of them went home and were put into a roundtuit pile.
Now you can buy cars that are ready to put on the layout (or nearly so).
Put on the layout??? There's a new concept!!! I believe there are more
actual miles of HO and N Scale track down and operating today than every
before in the history of the Hobby...... and from what I can gather the
sales of Atlas, etc.. flextrack are testimony to that.
And forget about the "Aging of the Hobby" BS. Look in old issues of MR and
you'll see old guys in every picture. In fact, I'd wager people are getting
into the Hobby (or at least getting up to speed faster) earlier than ever
before because it doesn't take 15 years to figure out how to lay track or
build a layout that you can actually run a train on. People still get into
the Hobby after age 30 when they start having some leisure time and income.
They may not show up on the
radar because they don't buy Model Railroader (there are other magazines
now) or join the NMRA (they get enough organizational BS at work). The
health of the Layout Design and Operations SIGs tell me the Hobby is doing
just fine, thank you.
Time is at a premium now and people are picking and choosing projects
instead of buying kits for ordinary cars for their railroad. Why not pay a
Chinese person a few extra bucks to build a car and be able to finish your
layout or work on projects that you really have an interest in......decals,
paints and detail parts are still selling well as are high end specialized
kits..... why waste 15 minutes or a half hour assembling an Athearn kit when
you could be working on your favorite prototype kitbash?
Charlie Vlk
> I was thinking about this the other day. Could the lack of kits be a
> function an aging modeler base? As one gets older and their eyesight gets
a
> little worse, maybe the ability to assemble some of these finer kits is
> compromised, while at the same time their income level increases
(including
> disposable income since Billy and Suzie are out of the house) and they
will
> pay the premium for a RTR, well detailed kit?
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