I keep hearing the arguments about kids not being exposed to trains, they never saw a steam engine, etc, but the reality is that any of us let's say in our 50's or younger, never saw trains back in the 'good old days', never saw steam engines in active use, never saw the rail passenger service before Amtrak. Kids of course see trains on tv shows and movies and even around them, so how they are 'not exposed to trains' is a bit misleading, they never saw trains pulled by a steam engine, but they have seen trains, the irony is the railroads are probably in better shape today than they were when I was growing up, when the passenger then the freight railroads ended up going into government receivership. A lot of us in the hobby now my age or younger still love steam engines, for example, when all we ever saw growing up were diesels (I think kids of this generation were influenced by Thomas and Friends, where Diesels were considered devious *lol*) and I think it is because when exposed to them, there is a fascination. People don't necessarily only get drawn to things they know intimately in their own lives...
I think the hobby goes through ebb and flow, and I think that is true of any hobby. The HO and N world seem to be doing okay, despite claims they were dying even when I was growing up, and again, if young people are not exposed to trains, why are the N and HO markets doing pretty well? Some of it is us older folks, but there are also a lot of younger folks in those scales, and new ones coming into it, so again the argument kids don't know trains so won't do this doesn't fly. I also will add that hobbies are something that requires leisure time, and it happens that older people, especially ones who have retired, have the time. Many of us who are in the hobby seem always to be in the prep or planning stages because we don't have the time, people are working long hours, commuting, if they have kids they have endless things to do with them, and despite the lure of the basement,and despite popular conceptions, they also have spouses who would prefer to have some time with them, too
. So hobbies in many cases always have been skewed towards older folks, not to mention that generally older people may have more disposable income (not all do, obviously, and retired people on fixed incomes obviously have the time and maybe not all the money they could wish for for it). People have been talking about the death of classical music probably since it came about, but it seems like audiences for this form always have been older *shrug*.
To quote Mark Twain, I think the reports of the death of the hobby are exaggerated, I think it is more like the late Douglas Adams, in his book on vanishing wildlife, making the observation about the Kimodo Dragon, said it seems like despite the popular idea it was vanishing, always seemed to have small numbers, has small numbers, and seems like in the future they will too....
I think of course there are things that can be done to promote the hobby, specifically our little segment of it. I tend to agree with others, that our hobby is not always so friendly to younger people, some of the people writing on here for example make it seem like every kid is this raging out of control monster who have no respect or behave badly, and quite honestly I have seen what others have written, where vendors and such automatically give the stink eye to kids or young adults. There are a lot of clubs that won't even think of having kids as members and even if a parent is a member aren't happy, they are the stereotype of a bunch of grouchy old guys playing with their trains (and this is not limited to the O gauge world, talking in general), and if they remember they were once kids think they of course were angels.......the train companies could do some things in this area, sponsor events for kids perhaps, find ways to get themselves in the eye of kids, but to be honest most of their marketing and such seems to be aimed at people already in the hobby (understandable, but still).
I think having a range of products make sense, Lionel did that in the "Golden Age", that also economically allow a wider range of people to partake, I really like the Lionchief series because the engines are relatively affordable, allow command control that is pretty nifty and allow people who can't afford a 600 buck legacy diesel or a 1k legacy steam engine have something.
One of the things I thought about that I wish I would see (but likely would not) is to have the players in the 3 rail market, work together to figure out these issues, how to promote the hobby, see it as an industry. In the scale world through NMRA standards, for example, scale manufacturers have a common control system and that only has helped it catch on (DCC), and they have industry groups that promote the hobby. I realize that scale modelling is a bit different, but for example with DCC someone doesn't have to buy different systems to control different engines, the people who produce the DCC decoders and control systems compete on features and price, having better sound libraries, etc. If manufacturers had made their stuff incompatible, command control would be a tiny fraction of the size it is in the scale world, people would have been locked into either hacking engines to work with this unit or that (kind of like someone replacing TMCC and Legacy guts with PS 2 or 3 setup. It sounds great, the idea you can lock in an audience to your system and be forced to buy the controlling system to go along with it, more $$$, but it also limits the size of the hobby as well, it is a barrier and whatever individual gain they get out of proprietary systems, they probably lose people not wanting to have to buy multiple control systems. That is just one example, but my point is that instead of fighting over the carcass to pull out whatever they can (at the expense of the 'other guy'), they could be doing things to broaden the hobby so instead of fighting over a carcass, they are looking at a herd that can feed them (been watching too many Nat Geo programs I think)......the key here is growing the hobby, not pulling out from whatever is out there today. Not holding my breath on this, the model that the various companies (mostly Lionel and MTH) have seems to be not looking at the overall hobby and gaining more revenue from an expanding market, but rather chasing static (or shrinking dollars) in a zero sum game.
One thing I think would be huge would be to have "train guys" running the companies, people who are generally interested and excited with O gauge 3 rail, rather than being pure business people. Enthusiastic people like that have a tendency to want to promote the hobby because they love it.....my model was Richard Kuhn, who was an enthusiast who bought Lionel from what I understand because he loved the trains, and had the enthusiasm for example (if I got my story right), to see through TMCC happening (tale I heard was Neil Young proposed it and he listened, or some variation thereof). Compare what happened with car makers when the beancounters run the show or when you have car guys who love cars running them, and you get the idea. It isn't that these aren't businesses, they are of course, but businesses run by marketing people and finance people generally don't necessarily do the best things for the product, they generally tend to be people like the clowns who ran GM into the ground, then the people who came up with new, exciting things for people to drive. I have met some of the 'car guy' types, and even when in vicious competition with the other makers, they also respected what other companies were doing, and appreciated what that did for the car market, it wasn't just about numbers (I met Bob Lutz many years ago through a friend, and when you talked about cars with him you couldn't miss how much he loved them, or how much teasing he gave me over being an Alfa person...... I think we could use people like that, or more of them, I think that would go a long way, too.
Personally, I don't think the hobby is going to die, it survived the almost death of Lionel, it survived the worst (and best) of MPC, it survived the fighting between MTH and Lionel that nearly took one or both of them down, it will survive the dying off of the baby boom generation (many of whom, quite honestly, may not be buying all that much new anyway, since many of them either are collecting old stuff or running postwar and the like), something has kept it going this long, heck the depression couldn't even kill it.
