gmorlitz posted:modeltrainsparts posted:A lot of good thoughts here (and one or two absurd ones). Mostly good though. As with any aspect of our lives it is usually the result of many forces and factors. Two that haven't been mentioned here are: First the cost of trains as a percent of income as compared to say 1950. There is a significant disparity there.
Are trains more expensive or less expensive now?
Gas was a quarter a gallon, a hundred bucks a week was a decent salary, a car cost (maybe) a couple of thousand dollars and depending on where you lived, a house might have been 4 figures. Not counting pennies.
And going to see the Phillies was painful no matter what it cost. Still is.
Gerry
Probably equally expensive. Gas was 25c a gallon (heck, I remember premium (ethyl!) at a cut rate gas station for 33c a gallon in the early 70s), but if you scale that with general inflation it isn't all that far from where gas prices are today in real terms. A car cost a couple of thousands of dollars, but when you are making 100 bucks a week, have bills to pay, taxes, etc, that couple of thousand dollars represented an investment that wasn't trivial (scale it to today, and that 2000 dollar car if you factor in other cost increases, is likely close to 30k today).On the other hand a modern car in many ways will cost you less over its life, back then cars didn't last as they do today, in the time you own a modern car you likely would have bought several cars back in the day (the average length of car ownership these days is 11 years, back in the 1950's it was likely a maybe 4-5 years, if not less than that).
My house in the 1950's went for like 16k, today it is over 500k likely.
If you factor in what salaries were, what the cost of living was, then Lionel trains were likely expensive, a set that cost 50 bucks back then would be somewhere around 500 today, scaled to what things cost. The famous 700e that sold for 75 bucks in the late 30's would be about 2500 in today's dollars (roughly the MSRP on some of the high end engines today). The nature of the hobby has changed, though,back in the 1950's the big market would be kids, when these were truly trains, today the big market is adults, whether the scale /hi rail operator who buys the scale products and command control engines, or the person recreating the post war 'toy train layout' (or anything between), while parents buying for kids is an important market, the advertising Lionel does in OGRR and other magazines is not aimed at kids, it is aimed at adults, the only ads I see aimed at kids are around Christmas time where stores might advertise having starter sets.
Personally I would argue that having kids exposed to the hobby is likely as valuable as kids taking up the hobby, that even if the kid gets train set, plays with it a bit, then moves on to other toys, or they see a big display layout at a train show, that is planting seeds for the future, they don't have to build a layout, they don't have to be into switching or operations or belong to a club (though it would be nice if some did), they just need to have some inkling it is out there, so if they run across it later, they take it up. And yes, it is self serving in some ways, for manufacturers to keep making our toys, there needs to be a base that replenishes itself going down the road.
