@Dennis GS-4 N & W No. 611 posted:I was wondering about this topic earlier today. I suspect that the tinplate enthusiasts are a declining in number over time, and, the average age of tinplate enthusiasts is gradually inching up.
The people that I knew as a child who had tinplate were my parents age. And, most of the people my parents age who had model railroads owned and operated postwar O gauge trains, or Gilbert's American Flyer. Obviously a limited sample size, but by that time, the major manufacturers had discontinued producing tinplate trains for other gauges, so the observation is amply supported by the facts.
I suspect a lot of us who are current tinplate enthusiasts likely had postwar trains growing up, and fell in love with tinplate later in time. When you add a saturated tinplate marketplace with a declining group of potential customers, that doesn't bode well for demand.
Conversely, I got into tinplate much later, and my first train was an mpc era starter set. I got into tinplate after seeing it in mth catalogs and didn't know anyone who had tinplate growing up. I put if off for a long time and then went in really hard. I have never really been interested in the post war era offerings. I certainly agree that the market is small, and unfortunately it also got saturated with multiple paint schemes of the same thing over and over.
