Your predictions for the model railroading hobby in the new decade?

Metro Red Line Jan 6, 2010

  1. Metro Red Line

    Metro Red Line TrainBoard Member

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    Good call, thanks. I haven't used BFS yet, but I heard lots of great things about it.

    Another prediction: Another product from the makers of BFS that allow mechanical turnout motors to run smoothly - Tortoise Phlegm! :)
     
  2. Metro Red Line

    Metro Red Line TrainBoard Member

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    You know, I posted the same thread on the Trains.com forums and someone pointed out an already-available iPhone app called WiThrottle:

    [​IMG]

    http://www.withrottle.com/
     
  3. Shooter

    Shooter TrainBoard Member

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    I third that (or fourth it, or am jumping on the bandwagon by now).

    ---jps
     
  4. HappyValley

    HappyValley TrainBoard Member

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    Here in the NE it's used for insulation and the 1" is carried most everywhere, 2" is harder to find (i think HD carries it though). $15 to $20 for a 4x8 1" sheet.

    I need a good hot wire cutter though.
     
  5. Mark Watson

    Mark Watson TrainBoard Member

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    Now I gotta try that!! *downloads*
     
  6. NYW&B

    NYW&B Guest

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    Point of information - While indeed true that the use of pink, or blue, styrofoam insulation board for creating terrain gained great hobby popularity in the mid to late 1980's, it was in fact introduced to hobbyists as a scenery material in a major MR layout building article by Linn Westcott...all the way back in 1957!

    NYW&B
     
  7. Metro Red Line

    Metro Red Line TrainBoard Member

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    Well, though mainstream awareness of the Internet didn't happen until the second half of the 1990s, it actually started in 1969. :)

    But, did styrofoam even exist in the 1950s? I thought it was invented in the mid or late ''60s (Then again, I didn't appear on this Earth until the early '70s).
     
  8. friscobob

    friscobob Staff Member

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    Should lead to another rule in the train room- texting and running trains do not mix. ;)
     
  9. Logtrain

    Logtrain TrainBoard Member

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    In this next decade I forsee the following things happening.

    1- More "garage" manufacturers coming out with detail products or simple resin kits coming into the industry.

    2- More highly detailed protype specific models, which Atlas has done a great job with recently with their SD-24/SD-26 lines.

    3- More manufacures having DCC installed from factory or at least making the locomotives DCC ready for drop in decoders.

    4- I hope I am wrong on this one, but I also see more manufacturers doing Built-up kits instead of kits you actually have to put together. The reason I hope I am wrong about this one is for a bad feeling I have. When yes it is great for people that can assemble a layout or a scene in a short amount of time by just simply opening a box and gluing the building to the layout, I see a bigger picture here. If this does happen it will be the end of the "true modeler" as I might say. Us out there that enjoy building kits or even just using pieces out of a kit for something else will be forced to buy "master modeler kits" such as N-scale Architect, or scratchbuild our structure that we want. I see Built-ups as the nail in the coffin for the true model railroader.
     
  10. TWhite

    TWhite TrainBoard Member

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    Okay, I'm going to go out on a limb with this one and then duck, LOL!

    I predict EXTREMELY miniature electronic geegaws that fit into a capsule about the size of a Bayer Aspirin that control DCC, sound, smoke and what-have-you and don't take up all of the space in the boiler of model steam locomotives in Z, N, and HO, so that the model boiler can do what it's supposed to do, cover weight and balance that is necessary over the drivers for the locomotive to pull what it's SUPPOSED to, without either traction tires or Bullfrog Snot, thereby also freeing up another set of wheels for electrical pickup.

    New Concept: Plastic Locomotives that can actually pull more than their TENDERS, LOL!
    Just like brass.
    Tom
     
  11. CNW 1518

    CNW 1518 TrainBoard Member

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    I really hope to see more extended Steam products in N scale.

    I hope that there are more kits over RTR buildings.. Im on a budget.. and probably will be on one for the rest of my life. So I don't like how expensive the hobby has become compared to 10-15 years ago.

    I'd also like the "hobby" aspect to be back in it more than the "collecting" aspect. I feel those that are purely in it for "collecting" is what is helping keep prices so high.
     
  12. KaiserWilhelm

    KaiserWilhelm TrainBoard Member

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    I'd like to see all locomotives come at least 'DCC ready,' if not with DCC already installed. Same goes for sound, really. I think the prices right now on sound are outrageous... think about all the little childrens' toys as-small-or-smaller than our engines that have complex sound, built-in speakers and cost $10 or less. Why are sound decoders $90? It makes no sense.
     
  13. Benny

    Benny TrainBoard Member

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    Someone NAILED it with that Wi-throttle!!!!!!

    Now here's what I see: I see the explosion and then implosion of the garage maufacturer. That's right, it's going to go from boom to bust and all over night - as the machines become available, more will have them...and then the most important will be a file that can be copied in about 30 seconds because it's a big file and you're using a slow crawler..haha...

    The big one though, will be working Classification lights and Train boards on Steam Locomotives. Yep!!! More electronics!!!
     
  14. MANDONY

    MANDONY TrainBoard Member

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    I see a lowering of prices if the European makers do more of their assembly in China.

    I see the numbers of local hobby shops diminish; most purchases will be made on-line.

    I see the hobby becoming more gray. It will be increasingly difficult to draw young people into the hobby.
     
  15. NYW&B

    NYW&B Guest

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    Post Deleted.
     
  16. NYW&B

    NYW&B Guest

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    Sure it did! Stryrofoam was invented in 1941 and following the war became commercially available as an insulating product used in the construction field.

    NYW&B
     
  17. NYW&B

    NYW&B Guest

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    Based on what I've seen happening in the hobby during the past 20 years, I do not see nearly as rosy a future as do some other posters. I would say that by the end of the decade the following situations are likely to come to pass.

    1. Model railroad-specific hobby shops will disappear completely from the scene.

    2. The average age for those in the hobby will be 65. As the number of hobbyists thins, large clubs with permanent layouts will become a thing of the past.

    3. The great majority of hobbyists will simply be collectors, with serious actual "modelers" forming only a small fraction of the total. This shift will be precipitated by hobbyists spending increasingly longer hours at work and scant time to devote to hobbies.

    4. In spite of salaries remaining rather flat for most of the decade, prices of hobby items will continue to rise steadily. By late 2019 the average price of an HO or N steam road locomotive will be more than $1,000 while diesels will go for at least $700.

    5. Sales of most locomotives and rollingstock will be on a pre-order/pre-paid basis. Runs will likely be too small for items to commonly reach open market. The situation will essential be that of brass currently.

    6. There will certainally be electronic innovation but probably not to the extent some have suggested here...and prices for these features will not dramatically decline over time. In fact, they will be the chief reason locomotive prices will continue to rise.

    7. Manufacturers will revert to metallic shells for locomotives to gain much needed traction with their models.

    8. There will only be one, or at most two, hardcopy hobby magazines still in publication and they will either be bi-monthly, or quarterlies.

    NYW&B
     
  18. KaiserWilhelm

    KaiserWilhelm TrainBoard Member

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    All this gloom and doom is really depressing... and, to a degree, I think highly unrealistic.

    I went to a train show last week, and do you know what I saw? Lots of children with their parents... and these kids were absolutely mesmerized by what they were watching.

    As long as trains exist in our world, there will still be children who love them... and some of those kids will grow up to model. The railroading world was in full-scale retraction when I was a toddler in the mid 80s - it was arguably the darkest era in American railroading history - and I still managed to see trains and fall in love with them. It's still happening with kids today.

    In fact, the advent of the internet has made railroading even more accessible to young people. Any kid worth his salt can browse on over to Youtube and watch a train roll by - I certainly couldn't conjure up railroading action with a few keystrokes when I was younger but, again, somehow I still managed to become a modeler.

    Regardless, I don't see the 'World's Greatest Hobby' going away any time soon. There are always going to be people who like to watch trains roll and have a desire to capture that motion in their homes. Maybe some of your naysayers need to crawl out of the proverbial bomb shelter and realize that the world isn't ending... at least not yet.
     
  19. sandro schaer

    sandro schaer TrainBoard Member

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    i more or less agree with NYW&B.


    plus :

    - approx 5-8% of the current members of this forum are dead
    - another 5-10% quit the hobby
    - less than 5% new members joined this forum.
    - athearn, intermountain, atlas are gone. kader sells their own brand(s). kato only sells within japan
    - 30% of the forum members just read and post, they no longer can't afford to run trains
    - prices trippled from todays prices.




    but there's the biggest improvement that mankind ever saw :

    microsoft windows has no bugs and runs stable.
     
  20. TwinDad

    TwinDad TrainBoard Member

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    I wish I could say otherwise, but the key thing you're missing is VOLUME. Children's toys and iPods are so much cheaper (on a per-feature basis, at least) because they are made in the millions (in some cases billions). The cost to design and develop a commercially viable electronic device is actually quite high. The cost to replicate it on a huge scale (and thus amortize the development cost) is what is ridiculously low.

    As long as the market for model railroading electronics is as small as it is, the cost of electronics for that market will remain at best stable. We'll NEVER see the cost/feature ratios one sees in consumer electronics and children's toys. That's not to say we won't get plenty of feature for low costs.

    Having said that, I imagine we could squeeze a decent cost reduction out of more efficient use of "piggybacking" high-volume technologies. It's also possible that easier integration with the now-ubiquitous PC might make the hobby more popular.

    I see this coming, at some point, assuming the market either remains stable enough and/or grows enough to invite competition. One area that I see as ripe is in stationary decoders for auxiliary devices like turnouts and signaling. Imagine if you could have a really cheap decoder on each turnout, either tied to some kind of simple wiring bus or better yet powered and controlled directly from the rails. You just connect up your track, hook up a booster, plug your PC into the booster's USB port, draw your schematic in a control program on the PC, and run your trains from the PC (or your iPhone).

    We're very close to that already, and such a wiring-simple track system - where you basically get control of a complex layout as simply as you would a "toy oval", would overcome a major obstacle to people getting into the hobby. It's JMHO, but I think they're much less intimidated by the plaster & paint & ground foam than they are by the wiring. Simplify the wiring and you get more converts.

    Even if they still have to run feeders and buses every 3 feet or so for good conductivity, just the thought of not having to solder and build up a control panel - and greatly simplifying the "programming" (by using a GUI on a PC) would be good.

    My morning caffeine hasn't kicked in yet, so this commentary is worth what you paid for it...
     

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