New model railroaders?

[riverotter]

I'm with Miles, Im almost 40, and have never seen an operational steam engine in my life, but I do own a few; BIg Boy, Challenger, a couple of 4-8-4 mountains, a couple of Mikado's, and will use them on my layout for mainly passenger excursions. The closest I have come to a real one, was one that was on display here in town for a few years, and they let it get into bad shape. It now resides in Macon, GA in a museum, as it was once an ACL steamer. We may have never seen steam run, but do admire the contribution it made for the next generation of railroading.
In the same aspect, I own a couple of Gevos from Tower55 in SP Black widow scheme, which I've grown to admire quite well, (enough to paint 5 dash9's and decall the same way).:thumb:

When I got back into Railroad Modeling about 3 years ago, my Givens & Druthers included "steam locomotives only -- no diesels." Now? I have ten steam locomotives I cherish ... and 80 diesels! :cry: Don't even ask me about 50' boxcars, which were also "off the list" when I got re-started...

 

[riverotter]

I think it's important to at least plant the seeds and see what comes out of it. Let's face it. How many of us started out with true model grade equipment? I certainly didn't. And while I had a train set as a kid, I didn't get into what we call model railroading until I was in my mid twenties. I was sick with the chicken pox (yes, in my twenties) and my Wife brought me home an Athearn blue-box B&O passenger car kit to build to keep me busy. It took me all of 20 minutes, and I was hooked. Now, I build craftsman buildings and run expensive locomotives.
I think one of the problems we're going to see is that it's just too expensive for kids to go from the "trainset" to model railroading because there's very little in between. Athearn, MDC, and even Walther's kits were inexpensive, and certainly a cut above trainset quality. Now, everything is ready-to-run and costs 3 or 4 times as much. Sure, the Athearn GP-50 RTR looks and performs better than the old blue box specials. But the cost is out of reach for most kids.

I wonder if a LHS that devoted some space to a model RR layout
_in progress_ with scheduled workshops might help kindle more
interest in the hobby, especially if the techniques employed were
"easy" enough that people wouldn't freak out thinking how
complicated/time-consuming/expensive the hobby was?

 

[lester perry]

Hear Hear I agree