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How many railway modellers?


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One of the comments in the introduction to Great Model Railway Challenge was that "railway modelling was the biggest indoor hobby in the UK" or words to that effect. 

 

I would be interested to know if there is any data on how many people are railway modellers in the UK and how that information is gathered.

 

Not everyone reads magazines, or contributes to forum, or is a club member or goes to exhibitions.  Ultimately the model manufacturers are in existance to make money and they would not make models to sell ( for a profit) if they did not see a market.  I understand data gathering for this sort if exercise can be conducted on a set sample and extrapolated to the whole population - but these sorts of agencies charge a hefty fee for this data.

 

I do not want this to degenerate into a "what can we do to arract new blood" which has been covered ad nauseum.

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I'm interpreting 'Railway Modeller' as anybody who buys  relevant magazines or trains,  before we go down that rabbit hole; I reckon around 150K. Based on magazine circulation figures and Hornby having 75K followers on Facebook.

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You need to define 'Railway Modeller' first, and that gets wobblier the more closely you define it.  I was going to suggest that anyone who 'models' railways in the sense of using their skill and imagination to reproduce an actual or imaginary (but plausible) railway scene to scale, and with regard to the timeframe the model is intended to represent.  This scene can consist of working models or static dioramas.  But that lets out the many who use RTR, OOB, and RTP models to recreate such a scene, and it is possible to do this with a good degree of accuracy with such equipment; in fact the main reason I do not include myself in this number is that I weather, alter, detail, and upgrade mostly RTR and RTP models so that they are not as OOB.  It would be possible for instance to create a very good model of a GCR station in the late 50s using entirely OOB items.  

 

But I think it's fair to say that collectors are not modellers, so we can exclude them from this, but not from the number of those 'interested in model railways', which is what the marketing departments of manufacturers need to know.  What about those who model very plausible but non-existent railways; some of these are very skilled modellers and craftsmen who have to scratchbuild everything themselves.  Surely they are to be included but they buy almost nothing made by the trade.  Similarly, one can hardly exclude those who model in S, or finescale TT, or British H0, though admittedly we are getting a bit niche now.

 

If you say that modellers are those who at least attempt to get things accurate and to scale, that lets out the entire 00 community; no matter how hard we try, we can't even get the track gauge anywhere near the right size.

 

A tv programme a few years ago suggested that there were 2 million railway enthusiasts, which sounds as if it could be not far off ball park, but again did not precisely define what a railway enthusiast was.  I would guess that about a quarter of these model railways in a fairly serious sort of way, and that makes half a million, and growing slowly I believe despite the doom mongerers who've been telling me there's no new blood coming into the hobby for the last 60 years.  They leave the hobby when they find girls, and return when the kids they had with the girls they found have grown up and left home, always did, always will.  There are more clubs, more exhibitions, more magazines (and the online world on top of that) than there ever were.

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I doubt the TV producers or the big manufacturers are concerned about the difference between "modellers", RTR box openers and collectors (a whole subject on it's own!). The TV producers (if they bothered estimating at all) probably included all of the above for the purpose of presenting railway modelling as a large hobby, And manufacturers will mostly be interested in how many people buy their product, not necessarily what level of the hobby they are used for once purchased. Most casual watchers of the programme would probably call anything involving small trains as "railway modelling" anyway and in my opinion all levels of the hobby are part of a big community, sales of RTR and to collectors still bring money into the industry to keep manufacturers afloat and help to promote the hobby at "entry" level.

 

As for numbers I'd agree that magazine circulation and social media account interactions are a good way of getting an idea of how many modellers there are. Or perhaps if we knew what annual sales of model railway products were and how much an average modeller spent we could do some maths.

 

I'm curious as to wether it really is the "biggest indoor hobby in the UK" but I guess the definition of "hobby" is another can of worms. There are probably more households with board games than a model railway but many will only be played occasionally and the owners may not consider it a hobby as such. Computer gaming would also have a claim to the title.

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Johnster

 

Do you want all these "modellers" to fit on the head of a pin?

 

If you ask the question in a slightly different way, I think it might be possible to avoid such theological discussion: how many people in the UK have as a hobby model trains or railways?

 

I don't know the answer BTW, just the question. ;-)

 

K

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3 hours ago, adb968008 said:

In the last 90 days there was 340k items sold (425k including completed/unsold)
 

So ontrack for 1.2m model railway items a year.

 

There all in my loft! 

 

Edited by w124bob
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1 hour ago, The Johnster said:

 

If you say that modellers are those who at least attempt to get things accurate and to scale, that lets out the entire 00 community; no matter how hard we try, we can't even get the track gauge anywhere near the right size.

 

 

So Geoff Taylor (for want of an example) isn't a modeller; I beg to differ. 

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This debate has been had a thousand times before, and any attempt to define "railway modeller" will always require or cause the simultaneous definition of "not railway modeller", and that in turn will always make somebody grumpy and/or miserable, and achieve nothing else.

 

Why do that?

 

 

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I was pointing out the difficulty of defining the term 'Railway Modeller', not suggesting that 00 modellers aren't modellers.  The purpose of re-opening that particular worm can was to show how definitions can exclude people who should be included, and vice versa. 

 

My opinion, other opinions are available and may actually be better, is that collectors are not modellers and investors are not modellers because they never take their models out of the box.  I intend no criticism of collectors, they can spend their money any way they like and I sort of understand the pleasure of ownership; it's just not for me.  Investors I have no time for, because their greed and acquisitive Ferengi nature drive the prices I have to pay for secondhand items up, but the world is capitalist and I have to live with it as I'm not willing to go on the streets with molotov cocktails.

Edited by The Johnster
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8 hours ago, GlenPudzeoch said:

I would be interested to know if there is any data on how many people are railway modellers in the UK and how that information is gathered.

 

Ultimately, there is no definitive data on how many people are railway modellers in the UK.  Any number quoted is simply an estimate based on factoring known data.  The start data may be reasonably accurate, but the multiplicative factor is little more than a reasoned guess.

 

For example, RMWeb has almost 40,000 members (39,332 to be precise, as of today).  I'm also a member of a model railway club and around a quarter of my fellow club members post on here.  Therefore, from my small sample of fellow club members, I'd say an estimate of the size of the hobby is four times the number of RMWeb members, which gives me an estimate of 160,000.  However, that estimate is subject to a fairly high level of uncertainty because I don't know how accurate my sample of fellow club members is of the population as a whole.  I'm assuming four is a reasonable factor, but perhaps it could be three or five, which would yield estimates of 120,000 or 200,000 respectively.

 

However, you can also start with figures such as magazine sales and again do a sample survey of people asking them which magazines they buy to again derive a factor by which you can multiply the circulation figures for any magazine by.  If you use several starting points, you'll probably find that the answer is somewhere in the region of 150,000, which is I think the conclusion that was reached when this was discussed once before and is the figure that @spamcan61 has already quoted.

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4 hours ago, Binky said:

I doubt the TV producers or the big manufacturers are concerned about the difference between "modellers", RTR box openers and collectors (a whole subject on it's own!). The TV producers (if they bothered estimating at all) probably included all of the above for the purpose of presenting railway modelling as a large hobby, And manufacturers will mostly be interested in how many people buy their product, not necessarily what level of the hobby they are used for once purchased. Most casual watchers of the programme would probably call anything involving small trains as "railway modelling" anyway and in my opinion all levels of the hobby are part of a big community, sales of RTR and to collectors still bring money into the industry to keep manufacturers afloat and help to promote the hobby at "entry" level.

 

As for numbers I'd agree that magazine circulation and social media account interactions are a good way of getting an idea of how many modellers there are. Or perhaps if we knew what annual sales of model railway products were and how much an average modeller spent we could do some maths.

 

I'm curious as to wether it really is the "biggest indoor hobby in the UK" but I guess the definition of "hobby" is another can of worms. There are probably more households with board games than a model railway but many will only be played occasionally and the owners may not consider it a hobby as such. Computer gaming would also have a claim to the title.

 

Surely it's watching TV?

 

Yes it might be mind-numbing at times but surely it's a hobby (even though in the advert on Dave they are saying it's not a "valid hobby")

 

Even the online dictionary says:

Quote

 

an activity done regularly in one's leisure time for pleasure.

"her hobbies are reading and gardening"

 

 

So if reading is a hobby then surely watching TV is.

 

Which is a bit funny considering the quote apparently came from somebody in the TV business....

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3 hours ago, Dungrange said:

 

Ultimately, there is no definitive data on how many people are railway modellers in the UK.  Any number quoted is simply an estimate based on factoring known data.  The start data may be reasonably accurate, but the multiplicative factor is little more than a reasoned guess.

 

For example, RMWeb has almost 40,000 members (39,332 to be precise, as of today).  I'm also a member of a model railway club and around a quarter of my fellow club members post on here.  Therefore, from my small sample of fellow club members, I'd say an estimate of the size of the hobby is four times the number of RMWeb members, which gives me an estimate of 160,000.  However, that estimate is subject to a fairly high level of uncertainty because I don't know how accurate my sample of fellow club members is of the population as a whole.  I'm assuming four is a reasonable factor, but perhaps it could be three or five, which would yield estimates of 120,000 or 200,000 respectively.

 

However, you can also start with figures such as magazine sales and again do a sample survey of people asking them which magazines they buy to again derive a factor by which you can multiply the circulation figures for any magazine by.  If you use several starting points, you'll probably find that the answer is somewhere in the region of 150,000, which is I think the conclusion that was reached when this was discussed once before and is the figure that @spamcan61 has already quoted.

But just because RMweb has 40000 members, doesn't mean that they are all active. Some leave for all sorts of reasons including sadly death and their accounts stay active. 

Others forget their log in details and instead of asking for help, they start off with a new account. 

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The target market segment is probably Model Train Enthusiasts.  A sub segment of the Train Enthusiast genre.  There may be a few model railway enthusiasts who build model railways with track but no trains.  Conversely I have been known to run my battery powered locos  without track.   Many Enthusiasts have model railways, but an awful lot just have  boxes or cabinets full of trains which will one day  run on their layout or in the case of elderly enthusiasts which used to run on their layout.  What the trade really doesn't want to know about is folks like me who repair and upgrade 60 year old models  or build models from junk or reused components, or spend more time on RM web than actually modelling..    

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Ahh the simple joy <not> of trying to provide a quantifiable analysis to something without a clearly defined data set. 

How many tea drinkers in the UK. What defines tea? hot, iced tea, herbal tea, Fuze drinks.........

 

If we say modellers are anyone who buys RTR, that eliminates the model engineers and scratch builders. Is Lego a model railway? There are some pretty massive Lego layouts and clubs. Same applies to Brio. Now do we add virtual modellers to that list? Train sim and etc.

 

If you are talking about target markets and sales figures, then you are really only talking about RTR customers and perhaps Lego/Brio. How do you clearly define something that doesn't have a quantifiable edge? You don't and can't. You end up having to create an artificial definition that may suit your needs but isn't wholly accurate. 

I'm really glad I don't write statistical analysis software anymore. 

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Surely it's really about people who enjoy aspects of miniature representations of railways. I would count myself in that group as I like to open a box and recreate the operations of a railway 87 times bigger than that, and I enjoy layout planning as a creative exercise. But I don't have a workable layout of my own (I do have a Freemo module but I can't run it without other modules).

 

Any attempt to define it more narrowly is just going to create bad feeling from those whose corner of the hobby is excluded.

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I've no idea of the actual figures but some time ago (it might have been quite a while ago) I remember reading that the UK's top hobby was angling followed by railways in second place. Now I'm not sure if railways encompassed a general enthusiasm or models in particular but given that most who are interested in real railways are also interested in their small scale counterparts it probably doesn't matter much. 

 

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4 hours ago, kevinlms said:

But just because RMweb has 40000 members, doesn't mean that they are all active. Some leave for all sorts of reasons including sadly death and their accounts stay active. 

Others forget their log in details and instead of asking for help, they start off with a new account. 

 

Kevin is quite right, "members" on a forum do not equate to active modellers and certainly cannot be extrapolated upwards.  A more accurate statistic would be "active" (posted in the last month) members.

 

As an example, the now defunct, "Military Modelling" magazine had around 16,000 members on their forums, but only a fraction of that as subscribers / regular purchasers of the magazine, and it folded through lack of sales.

 

Perhaps we ought to define the difference between a "hobby" and a "pastime".

 

jch

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4 hours ago, kevinlms said:

But just because RMweb has 40000 members, doesn't mean that they are all active. Some leave for all sorts of reasons including sadly death and their accounts stay active. 

Others forget their log in details and instead of asking for help, they start off with a new account. 

 

That's all very true and serves to demonstrate the significant issue in estimating a rather vague term such as how many people are railway modellers in the UK.  To add to that list, there is of course the fact that not all members of RMWeb live in the UK.  There are a few on here from North America, Australia (including yourself) and no doubt many other locations across the globe.  That therefore means that the base number needs to be adjusted by other estimates, all of which are effectively guesses.

 

So, RMWeb has 39,332 members of which let's say 2% don't live in the UK, 2% of those who do live in the UK have passed away, but their account is still active and of those who are still alive and do live in the UK, 4% of such members have a second or duplicate account.

 

That therefore means that I'd have 39,332 * 0.98 * 0.98 * 0.96 * 4, which would give me an estimate of 145,000.  Ultimately, the only accurate number that I have used is the number of RMWeb member accounts - anyone can pick holes in any of the assumptions used to factor that number up and the same applies irrespective of what the start point used is, which could be exhibition attendances (remember them), magazine circulation, or members of the Hornby of Bachmann Collectors clubs or the Scalefour Society.  Which then brings in the other thing we can argue about - which start point is the most representative group in relation to the question.  Are all RMWeb members railway modellers, for example?

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