I was at the train store to-day and got the usual comment from an old man "there aren't many kids your age interested in model trains anymore, they're all off playing video games". Being 22 I seem to get that a lot from older folk while adventuring through the model railroad stores & clubs. I see many kids around my age and much younger interested in model trains but just can't seem to afford it anymore. When I was younger I would save up $12 every month to buy a Athearn HO scale Daylight coach for my Daylight trainset. Now, in place of the $12 kits are $60-$80 fully constructed coaches, the cheaper being of similar quality to my snap to-gether kits from the 90's. A Bachmann 4-4-0 which used to brandish a whopping price of $25 when I was 10, is now $125! I rarely see train sets at the general stores anymore, there used to be shelves of cheap $20-$40 train sets at K-Mart & Wal-Mart, but no more.
I feel as if the model railroading business has moved away from making "toy" trains for kids and caters more to the adults/seniors who are avid modelers. I don't mind buying used trains (as I do with tinplate for obvious reasons) but even some of the old IHC locomotives from 30-40 years ago are selling for $30-$50 (the prices I use are from stores only not online purchases like ebay, although for the most part they seem to be about the same). The tinplate trains from MTH, I would imagine being much more toy-like, would be much cheaper to produce than a scale model but even a "cheap" set is still in the ballpark of $500, and I doubt any younger kids that are actually into the older stuff will have the skills to refurbish many of these (even postwar).
Will model railroading ever go back down in price? Or will it continue to rise till (not to be a drag) the older generation is gone and anyone who once had any interest has lost it due to the absurd prices preventing them from getting into the hobby in the first place? Possibly making the model railroading industry collapse? I think of this sort of thing sometimes when I see kids at the train store looking for something they can buy for $5-$10 as I did 10-15 years ago but end up leaving with a disappointed look on their face, unless a parent steps in to help out... I recently gave a family an old wind up tinplate trainset because they couldn't afford the $400 for a Lionel starter set, that was about 8 months ago and the kids (4 & 7) and it's still their favorite toy, just goes to show (I think) that kids still love trains and that they will always be fascinated by them.
I'm curious what the general consensus is amongst some of the members here are, be it young or old, on how kids react to model railroading and trains to-day?
