Why Do We Feel The Need To Have Young People Take Up Our Hobby?

I'm 52 and my son is 12.  His interest in "our" trains comes and goes.  He had one of his friends over the other night for a spend the night.  The boy had never seen the trains and was really impressed for about 15 minutes then they both returned to the Xbox and PS4. 

One thing that has really helped him is his being able to run the trains AND doing so from the iPad (thanks MTH).  Also I have found getting engines and cars that he is interested helps a lot too.  He is interested in army items so a train with tanks and half tracks on flat cars was a big hit.

I was talking about the trains to him yesterday and said when I was his age I remember going to Toys r Us and there being an entire aisle of just trains.  He was blown away by that, he asked me if i was joking. I also told him that growing up nearly all my friends had a train layout of some sort at their house, again a similar response.

The world is vastly vastly different today than it was 40 years ago and am sure will be more so in another 40 years.

John

I agree with John that running trains from an I-Pad, remote unit or smartphone app has great potential to appeal to the young. My 7 year old grandaughter loves running LC+ locomotives using the handheld remote. Soon I will get her started using the smartphone app, and I know that will be a big hit with her.

A thought that just occurred to me is that when great strides are taken to rebuild and modernize the infrastructure in the US, including the railroads, that might generate a lot more interest in model railroading. I would have thought that we would be doing this by now, especially because this has already happened in other countries. Maybe some of our Forum members from European and other countries where major railroad renovations have occurred, can chime in on this subject. Arnold

I must be the only one who doesn't "feel the need".

I got into trains because "I liked them" nobody pushed them on me or said it might be a good hobby to get into.  Didn't have a train when I was a kid, got an HO set when I was 27 that was suppose to be for my newborn son, turned out to be a girl so....

Got 3 grandsons, they've seen the trains.  The oldest (7) I don't see him often enough but he likes to watch them.  The 3yr old wants to play with all the stuff on the layout but could care less about running trains.  The almost 2yr old doesn't have a clue about them.

Kids are going to gyrate towards what catches their eye at the moment, if it happens to be trains great, if not, oh well.

***But someone's gonna have a lot of stuff to deal with when grandpa (for some reason they call me Bubba or BawBaw ) goes bye bye!!!***

Meet my train crew. The next generation, just old fashion fun.....

I have found that these controllers from Lionel work the best....... LionChief Plus 🚂

Gary

My Daughter and Son grew up with my train layouts. For them it got to be a ho hum having trains. When my daughter was in her mid teens and kinda didn't want her friend to know her dad played with trains. Then one day I was sitting at the kitchen table looking threw a Greenberg price guide, my daughter came in with one of her friends, her friend noticed the Greenberg price guide and he said oh Lionel trains. I looked up and asked if he's familiar with Lionel trains. He said yep, he and his dad has a layout set up in their basement. He wanted to see my layout. From that day on, every time my daughter brought one of her friends over, the first thing she'd ask them, do you want to see my dad's trains.

Fast forward 20+ yrs w/my grandchildren, I decided to build a small layout and let the grandchildren help w/it. As the layout progressed, I named some locations on the layout after my grand daughter and grandson. I named the small town "MacKenzieville" after the grand daughter and the junk yard "Mason's  Junkyard" after the grandson.

Here's a pc of my grand son last week playing on the layout.

I noticed with my daughter back in the eighties that though she liked to run the trains even at five she got tired of watching it go round and round. I remembered the articles written by Frank Ellison about running a model railroad as if it were a real railroad. I got a stack of file cards and wrote a car number on each one and made a stack. Then I made a stack for each locomotive. Then I named each siding and made a stack of cards for all the sidings and spurs.  We would play make the train and pick up and drop off cars and I explained this is the purpose of real railroads.  Along the way I would sneak in a maintenance and repair session and she was expected to help. To start I taught her the names of the tools and her job was to hand me which ever tool I asked for and I would explain why I need that tool and what I was doing with it.  By the time she was 10 she could pull apart and repair most of her trains occasionally asking my advice.    I was hoping to create an engineer but she turned out a school teacher. Close enough.  She doesn't hesitate to pull apart common household items  lawnmowers, hairdryers, toasters etc. and repair them. I bet her shop is better than half of those on the forum.  I could go on about her skills but the point is too many of our young people have no mechanical or technical skills beyond scrolling a smart phone. The phone is smarter than they are. Technological societies stand atop the hammer screwdriver and pliers.  Grammar through high schools have removed shop from the curriculum, too expensive and  too dangerous. To my way of thinking toys should be about something other than the latest cartoon monster they should teach useful life skills.  Be it model trains, airplanes, doll houses.  Kids really don't know what they like it is up to the parents the adults in their life to push them in some direction if you don't someone will and you likely will not like the direction they go.  You cannot start when they are eight or ten you must start when they are very young the process must be entertaining and they will follow not noticing that you are pushing from the front.          j

Mike Caruso seems to have posted an honest answer!

Rigatoni Express Railroad posted:

Mike Caruso seems to have posted an honest answer!

Naaaaaaaaaaaah, too sentimental!

Simon

I relate to Johnacton's above comments about his daughter, which applies in certain respects to my children, now in their early 30s.

My daughter played with trains like they were dolls. Same is true with my 7 year old granddaughter. We would give the little people on the layout train rides in gondolas, and I would tell stories about the little people. My granddaughter brings her own little people, Shopkins, and we give them train rides and tell stories about them.

My son, who is very bright (much brighter than me which pleases me), would get bored running the trains as a young child. He was fascinated, however, by what goes on, mechanically and electrically, inside the trains and accessories. I remember he was particularly interested in the inside of the Lionel O22 switch tracks. He is now a mechanical engineer and Construction Project Manager for a company that build and renovates commercial buildings.

Both of my adult children now have little interest in the trains, but are amused that their Dad is so interested in them. LOL, Arnold

AGHR -- The Next Generation

The old guys like myself get to relax and shoot the breeze because the kids run the layout WAY better than we do. Yet another reason to have young people involved in the hobby.

DaveP posted:

One of the key points mentioned is the fact that parents  'don't have the time' or don't interact with their children much the way our parent did way back when. 

The point of having a child is to love them, nurture them, expose then to the world. When you leave them to the 'electronic babysitters', they lose that creativity, imagination and become introverted. 

My son is not your typical kid - loves to be outside playing basketball, biking; loves Legos and Hot Wheels. Loves to be with me and his mother. If I'm stepping out to run an errand or swing by the firehouse (I'm a volunteer firefighter) he will jump in the car with me. If I'm in the train room he'll hang with me and run the trains. If he's outside shooting baskets, I'll go outside and shoot some with him. 

He's not passionate as I am over trains  - his passion is coins, science and cars. But that's ok with me.

The takeaway is that truly spending time with children - talking with them, doing things with them and exposing them to different aspects of life, hopefully down the road, they'll want to do the same with their children.

Children are a massive investment of time and resources. My kids grew up with o scale trolleys and heavy metal. My grandson lives with me and gets steam engines and heavy metal. Nothing beats watching the trains in the dark with Black Sabbath cranking 😎😎

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. 

GUITARMIKE:  All aboard! Hahahahaha!!!!!

Rusty

trainroomgary posted:

Meet my train crew. The next generation, just old fashion fun.....

I have found that these controllers from Lionel work the best....... LionChief Plus 🚂

Gary

Gary,

The above is one of the many wonderful and inspiring photos on this thread.

As to controllers, my experience has been the same.  The controllers are smaller and fit into smaller hands, and the speed control dial and other buttons are fairly easy to explain (mostly).  With our grandchildren, I just plan to enjoy them and the trains together.  They have a layout at their house, but seem to want to play with it only when I ask if they would like to run the trains together.  Unlike in my generation, an electric train is not the "it" toy for them and their friends.

That's fine.  I can just enjoy running the trains and accessories with them.  I won't try to sell them on the hobby, but,  will just spend time together with them now.

_____________________________

Rusty:

       "And as the sunset faded, I spoke to the faintest first starlight.
And I said next time, Next time, We'll get it right!"

This singer-composer fronted my favorite local group, "Bob Seger and The Last Heard", and  regularly played at my high school's weekly dances.  They would always win the annual "Battle of The Bands" - a big deal, as these so-called, "Sock Hops" were exceedingly well attended, regularly filling the school's cafeteria with excited teens. 

We don't need to.  There is no need for it on our part.  More trains are in existence than all of us hobbiests can possibly use.

The need, such as it is, is for the youth, who ought to have more skills than thumb manipulation.

There is no need for me to recruit kids or adults to get into trains. If they like them they like them if not, oh well. 

My parents got me involved trains, I just like them. My Parents got my brother and myself a train for Christmas many years ago and we both continued when we became adults.

This kind of thread pops up every so often bemoaning the fact that we need younger people in the hobby. I really don't care if they do become involved, great if they do but I'm still playing with my trains either way. 

You can't force people to like something, yes even trains.

Dave

RadioRon posted:

Dennis GS-4 N & W No. 611 posted:

DaveP,

Very well stated!

 

Dennis, I might suggest revising the title of this thread to "Why we need to...."  As it is, it kinda indicates there is no need.   Just a suggestion (thats how it occurred to me).       Happy railroading!!

Thanks Dave!  Your suggestion is well taken. The title was intended to accommodate both views - both equally valid.  

I generally don't feel the need to promote the hobby so as to preserve the hobby, or to swell the number of future hobbyists.  I do, however, enjoy introducing the hobby to young children who want to see the layout and run the trains.  Their smiles and laughter are worth the price of admission.  If they choose to enjoy the hobby for themselves at some point, then that's fine.

Similarly, I taught my children to swim at an early age.  Two loved to swim, and ultimately became lifeguards at large, public locations. One seldom swims.  I believe that they should do whatever they enjoy, not what I enjoy.  Exposing them to swimming, however gave them that opportunity.

Q. Why do we feel the need for young people to take up our hobby?

A. Why not?

I have been active since the age of 3, that's 40 years so far including working part time running the train department, at my local hobby shop.  First of, we had people under the age of 18 buying stuff, not a lot but they where buying. Parents where buying train sets, combining all of the different scales we probably sold about a few hundred a year, did all of them stay interested, probably not but now lets fast forward in their life lets say their 30's they now have kids and are looking for something to do, they pull out the train they had as a kid, maybe it was a hand me down from their dad, they set up a layout, the kids play with dad for a while but loose interest for now, however dad (or mom) is looking for something to do, they take up the hobby, many people may be lone wolf modelers, some may join a club, but look at all the people in their 30's to 40's on Facebook or on YouTube  getting into the hobby (maybe again) the hobby is not dying......... or the interest in it........  I think we are focusing to much in the wrong age group in the hobby, yes give a train to a kid, but look for that kid 20 to 30 years latter and show that person why this is the worlds greatest hobby.

As the saying goes: "Expect the unexpected."  Given the school closings in our area, and, throughout the state, I'm so glad that I introduced my sons to the hobby at an early age!  My oldest son has become an interested hobbyist, but not really an "enthusiast", with the hobby as a principal avocation.  He has built a nice layout in his basement for his family, and, particularly for his three young boys.  Now, the four of them have substantially more time to enjoy running the trains together, and playing with the layout.  I'll plan to send them a few videos of my layout, so we can talk about running the trains together.

I "lost" my youngest son to the first "Super Mario Brothers" video game, as the early Nintendo consoles became available.  That was one way he enjoyed spending some spare time after school -- often with friends.  Times change, and the ability for a young person to occupy time in an enjoyable manner is valuable IMHO, as long as it doesn't result in neglecting other things that need to be learned and accomplished.  

But, teaching my sons about the hobby, and, encouraging the grandchildren to similarly enjoy the hobby, has provided a significant benefit as the available time has become more plentiful.