RE: (erielack) Rich Man's hobby

["Paul R. Tupaczewski" <paultup_@_optonline.net>]

Dave Green wrote:

> I generally don't mind changes but the direction Athearn has 
> gone, indeed the whole hobby, has me fed up.  I find these 
> new Athearn models discouraging.  Yes, the detail is better 
> and the newer models are more accurate, but it doesn't seem 
> worth the money.  Are people buying this stuff or are sales 
> down?  The old Athearn was about all I could afford.  The 
> quality was good enough and if I wanted to make it better I 
> could choose to do that.  My pocketbook can't justify a $100 
> RS-3 or a $140 SD45-2 and I don't make that bad a living.  
> For aesthetic purposes I can see buying a single RS-3 for my 
> layout but what good is a single SD45-2?  You have to have at 
> least a paired set and the higher prices put that further 
> outside my reach.  And, having become used to $5-$7 cars I 
> can't buy a $15 - $20 Ready-To-Roll car that is all prettied 
> up.  If I did buy one it would mean less to me because I had 
> no hand in building it.
> 
> I miss the old Athearn.  They made the hobby affordable for 
> me.  It seems the creativity of the hobby is disappearing and 
> being replaced by the McDonald's "gotta have it now" 
> generation.  I have a new-found interest in military 
> modeling, partly in response to the skyrocketing prices of 
> model railroading.  Trains will always be my first love, but 
> for sheer economic reasons I foresee my model railroading 
> activities diminishing with a corresponding increase in 
> historical research (i.e. armchair) and the aforementioned 
> static plastic models.  I was just starting to get out of the 
> armchair after years of struggling to establish a career.  It 
> is very disappointing to have to face this realization now 
> that I have time to resume modeling.


Well, the "rich man's hobby" does seem to be true. Many modelers today are
either retired with a lot of disposable income, or professionals who pull in
6-digit salaries. Truth be told, they're driving this new "high end" market.

There's also the axiom of "time is money" - in the good old days, you could
purchase a relatively inexpensive kit, and then superdetail the thing
wonderfully - all at the cost of a) detail parts, and b) your time. Today,
many people think their time is more valuable than that and are willing to
pay for the kit to come superdetailed (when you add up the price of detail
parts and your time, these "expensive" models might even turn out to be
cheaper in the long run)

Although it does appear that some manufacturers are listening - Life-Like
has been doing their Proto 1000 series for a number of years, and now Atlas
has announced their "Trainman" series of inexpensive, high-quality equipment
in HO, N and O scales (though sadly, their first group of HO equipment only
has ONE car that's correct for the EL timeframe, and none that are correct
for DL&W/Erie, though the O scale Trainman models do fit the earlier
timeframes).

And by the way, you still CAN get the Athearn "blue box" kits. Harder to
find, yes, but they're still producing them.

	- Paul

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