I am more along the thoughts of Landsteiner (the idea that working residents and interns 120 hour weeks as a good idea always mystified me, and the resistance of older doctors who say "I had to do it". Knowing what long hours do to people like that from personal experience (thankfully not as a doctor), it was idiotic then and it is idiotic today....
I think a lot of this is us older or now getting older folks idealizing what we had. I am handy, I grew up working on cars with my dad, but want to know something? First of all, you could work on cars back then, they were stone age technology. The other thing was they were quite frankly junk compared to todays cars, they broke down a lot more often, they died by the time you made your last payment and required all kinds of crazy things (like in cold weather sticking a plastic comb to open the automatic choke to try and start the car). The reality is that modern cars last longer and require a lot less maintenance, pure and simple, and while I would love to have an old car to restore, I don't miss doing it to keep the car going, I have a lot of other things I would rather do.
And I dispute the notion that 'no one wants to work', and that is why we don't see train stuff at the 5 and dime. The reason we don't see train stuff at the 5 and dime is because sales have gone online. Sure, there are kids who train as a plumber and say "this isn't for me", want to know something? Happened in the good old days to. My uncles had a construction firm, and they had people who didn't work out, said it was too hard and dirty..others came on and made their whole career there. My son is a young professional classical musician in a chamber group, and they when not travelling all over the place, hustling here and there to perform, they rehearse 7 days a week 6 or 7 hours a day with everything typically. There are young people with a passion, there is a young couple my wife follows on you tube (they are both engineers) who are fixing up an old farmhouse themselves. The husband has a new channel where he inherited a bunch of shop equipment from his grandfather, industrial milling equipment, lathes, etc, and is restoring the equipment (it is like 30 years old) and you can just see his enthusiasm for it. Just watching him move this stuff (this isn't Lowes level equipment, stuff weighs a couple of tons each).
Of course kids are different, I am in my late 50's and I heard how our childhood was decrepit compared to my parents generation. We had TV, my parents didn't, we had access to things they wouldn't, especially growing up in the depression. We had more organized activities than my parents (and kids today, well, even more so). Things change, and change usually is for the good, and in the process you often lose things that are regrettable. BTW there are a ton of young people who get into 'the old things', like the young guy with the shop equipment, you would be amazed if you look around (you tube is proof of that).
Basically the answer is the world changes all the time, and as I grow older I realize how much has changed. Yet some fundamental things don't, kids have imaginations, young people grow up and end up working, doing a variety of things and the reality is we likely don't see it.
And getting back to trains, the quality of what we have today (even with grumbling about 'crap') is a lot better than it was back then. RTR is predominant because the quality is there and quite honestly the old kits couldn't touch the quality of much of the RTR stuff. Back then it was a necessity, you made grass out of dyed sawdust and ground up foam, you don't need to today. I enjoy scratch building, taking a bunch of stuff I had on hand and making it into something as special as I could (I had a model of grand central terminal in NYC I built with cardboard, bits of wood I had, some of the facade work was done with carved plaster of paris or joint compound) but I also am happy that I can choose to do that and buy what I need. I think for a lot of people time is the issue, and having RTR buildings and cars and engines saves that time for the things they like to do, like operate the trains.
