aussteve posted:
- O scale trains is a brutally expensive hobby to be in for younger families while they struggle with rent, food, utilities, healthcare, kids, insurance, etc.
- It takes a lot of room to collect O scale trains or have a permanent layout. Refer to item 2, people don't have the space/money to dedicate to large trains like they used to.
All of your points are good ones. I'd like to comment on two:
My wife and I, while raising 4 of our kids plus a foster child, were living paycheck to paycheck. It was only much later that I got "into" trains. My motivation was two-fold...I think a Christmas tree should have a village and trains running under it, and, I remember, personally, the last days of steam.
The room needed for a train hobby is not often mentioned. I've always collected "stuff", and I have very large collections of View Master reels (2,100), as well as 3-D "family" slides from the 1950s (4,800). However, each collection only takes up 2 dresser drawers. While the kids were growing up, there was no room for a layout since our old house has a cellar rather than a basement.