The image of the hobby.

[Neil]

Today this article appeared in The Observer, describing the growth of interest in model railways and sales of equipment during lockdown. There's no fun poked or tired cliches present just honest, factual reporting.  It's just the latest in a growing mainstream media interest in railways and model railways. It made me wonder if the public perception of our hobby isn't a whole lot better than we think or worry it may be. If you're of my age you'll remember  when 'railway enthusiast' was shorthand for 'socially inept, probably still lives with his parents' or worse. However I sense something different and more positive at play now.

[Steamport Southport]

I thought the article is awful. Even the headline is a massive cliché.

 

Mostly about Scalextric, but somehow manages to shoehorn trains into it.

 

Then goes on to cliché after cliché.

 

Big kids playing? Beeching? Rod Stewart? Jools Holland? All clichés I'm afraid.

 

 

I'm wondering where the photo of the antiquated Class 29 they normally use is.....

 

Found it!  

 

 

 

 

Jason

[steve1]

As Neil rightly points out, it doesn't extract the urine but uses a set of reference points to which non-modellers will be able to relate.

 

On fora for 2 other of my hobbies, hi-fi and wet shaving, anything I post relating to model railways is received positively and with genuine interest. I think that Neil may well be right in that general perception of the hobby is improving. There will, sadly. always be a sneering minority but that applies to any hobby activity that those with narrow minds can't comprehend.

 

steve

Edited October 25, 2020 by steve1

[westerner]

I too thought the article gave a positive out look on our hobby as well as all modelling hobbies, Jason seemed to have missed the bits about Hornby sales going up as well as the sales of Peco and Hattons.

[PatB]

Looks fine to me, as a general, lifestyle article in a non-specialist publication. 

 

I do agree that the circumstances of this year seem to have prompted many people to have a good look at what they do with their time outside of work and away from the TV, and, I think, many have found themselves wanting. 

 

Even here in WA, where we've been spared hard lockdowns within the state, MrsB and I have seen a distinct uptick in the interest in the ceramics classes we run, as people realise that, when deprived of outside stimulus, they've nothing to do. 

[Steamport Southport]

19 hours ago, westerner said:

I too thought the article gave a positive out look on our hobby as well as all modelling hobbies, Jason seemed to have missed the bits about Hornby sales going up as well as the sales of Peco and Hattons.

 

I didn't. But I thought the article itself was very poorly written. That's what I have a problem with.

 

And yet again using the tired cliché of "Rod Stewart likes trains so they must be cool".

 

It may have escaped some peoples notices but Rod Stewart hasn't been seen as being cool for well over forty years!

 

Great way to attract youngsters. Highlight a 75 year old that hasn't released a "current" record since the 1970s.

 

"Grandad who's he?"

"Don't know. Ask Great Grandad!" 

[rab]

On 25/10/2020 at 19:13, steve1 said:

There will, sadly. always be a sneering minority but that applies to any hobby activity that those with narrow minds can't comprehend.

 

steve

I think it's rather unfortunate when, as one rep!y has shown,

the sneering comes from within the hobby.

Edited October 27, 2020 by rab

[RichardT]

1 hour ago, Steamport Southport said:

And yet again using the tired cliché of "Rod Stewart likes trains so they must be cool".

 

<snip>
 

Great way to attract youngsters.

I think the whole point of the article was that model railways are a hobby for adults - precisely *not* about attracting youngsters.  And while I’ll agree that it would be good not to have Rod Stewart or Jools Holland mentioned every time the mass media cover our hobby in an adult fashion, those two are still currently the reference points for this type of article aimed at a generalist readership.
 

As to the rest of the text, it wasn’t in any sense badly written or cliched.  In another current thread on RMWeb someone, whose name for some reason escapes me at the moment, has wrtten about museum curators hiding away static loco models in “dusty store rooms” because such types of objects “didn’t fit their agenda” and that said curators were in any case  likely only to have a “degree in media studies”.  If you want to know what a string of lazy cliched stereotypes really looks like, then that’s it.

 

Richard T

(Sometime museum curator)

Edited October 26, 2020 by RichardT
Correct quote

[eldomtom2]

Mind you, from what I've read, the museum curators could unleash a hoard of stereotypes about railway enthusiasts right back...

[RichardT]

14 minutes ago, eldomtom2 said:

Mind you, from what I've read, the museum curators could unleash a hoard of stereotypes about railway enthusiasts right back...

The problem being that, when you’re a museum curator (well, archivist to be accurate) who is *also* a railway & model railway enthusiast, and an ex-railway worker to boot, then that just causes a rift in the space-time continuum into which you disappear on the back of a Möbius strip...

 

RT

[Miserable]

I 'came out' as a railway modeller as I started a 'working diorama' at the beginning of the lock-down (and got a tad carried away). Almost all the people I know are in the arts in all sorts ways, and no one has, to my surprise, sneered. In fact it was more 'I didn't know you had it in you' as they seem too accept it as 3d art - that said if I'd literally gone out a boutght a Train Set it might be different I  guess. Plus trains and blues go together anyway ;-)

[Happy Hippo]

3 hours ago, RichardT said:

 has wrtten about museum curators hiding away static loco models in “dusty store rooms” because such types of objects “didn’t fit their agenda”

Slightly away from your point, I have always felt for the NRM.  having been through their store rooms some years ago.  There must have been a dozen or so 3.5" gauge un rebuilt Bulleid light pacifics in various liveries and standards of build which had been donated.

 

I can see the poor sod throwing up his/her/their hands in horror at the thought of yet another arriving.

 

Perhaps that is where the hiding away of static models in dusty store rooms jibe originated?

 

 

 

 

[Barry Ten]

6 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

I didn't. But I thought the article itself was very poorly written. That's what I have a problem with.

 

 

 

 

Seemed perfectly well written to me, an entirely unobjectionable piece of light journalism.

[PatB]

If anything's going to get young people into the hobby, I'd be fairly confident it's not an article in The Observer, so whether or not Rod and Jools are relevant to anyone under 40 is pretty much beside the point. 

[PMP]

8 hours ago, PatB said:

If anything's going to get young people into the hobby, I'd be fairly confident it's not an article in The Observer, so whether or not Rod and Jools are relevant to anyone under 40 is pretty much beside the point. 

 

Whilst there was ‘nothing in it for me’, it’s ok as a light lifestyle piece. 
I wholly concur re the relevance above. My eldest daughter in her mid twenties has never bought a newspaper for ‘her personal consumption’ in her life, I expect the same result of her younger sibling, cousin, and most of their friends. Richard from Hattons talks about a customer base having thought about a railway for twenty years. So that’s a mid forties person, still the type that’ll buy a newspaper whom might be interested, and a mid life returnee, or new starter. 
Seems a logical media platform to place such an article to me.

 

Edited October 27, 2020 by PMP

[t-b-g]

When people in the public eye "come out" as railway modellers and talk about the hobby as well as Rod Stewart has done, it can do the hobby nothing but good.

 

Being sniffy about him not being "cool" enough does exactly the opposite.

 

Modellers having a dig at other modellers has never really done the image of the hobby any good at all.

[Ruston]

On 25/10/2020 at 19:13, steve1 said:

As Neil rightly points out, it doesn't extract the urine but uses a set of reference points to which non-modellers will be able to relate.

 

On fora for 2 other of my hobbies, hi-fi and wet shaving, anything I post relating to model railways is received positively and with genuine interest. I think that Neil may well be right in that general perception of the hobby is improving. There will, sadly. always be a sneering minority but that applies to any hobby activity that those with narrow minds can't comprehend.

 

steve

 "wet shaving"? I never would have imagined that shaving would be a hobby, let alone that there's a forum for it. I thought it's just something that you have to do if you don't want to grow a beard.

 

Presumably then there are dry shaving forums, where guys admire each other's Remington and Philips electric shavers? Which ones are the P4 equivalents of shaving?

[steve1]

Ruston,

 

Read and learn.

 

https://www.atgshaving.com/

 

There are several others but I have found this to be the one best suited to me.

 

steve

[Nearholmer]

When it comes to "the image of the hobby", I think its possible to get way too neurotic.

 

Its a hobby,  it does nobody any harm, it makes quite a few people happier, if you enjoy it, pursue it, if you don't, don't.

 

Many other hobbies come in for a bit of mild mocking occasionally too, its just human nature to mock "the other", and provided mild mockery is where it stops, it does no harm.

 

My other hobby is cycling, and that elicits plenty of mockery and, thankfully exceedingly rarely,  irrational hatred, for reasons that really do baffle me - far worse than the mild mockery that goes with being a "train spotter", because once in a blue moon it is backed up with use of a motor vehicle as an offensive weapon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[The Johnster]

Time was, modellers wrote in magazines under pseudonyms lest their identities became public knowledge, to the detriment of their reputations, honour, and careers.  At least we have moved on from that!  
 

I have no issues and most of my non- modelling chums up the pub, a pretty traditional working class pub btw, know what I do, the reactions ranging from ‘meh’ to genuine interest, not so much in the railway aspect, though there is some of that from those who have worked in the industry, but in the various problem solving processes.  Questions about how things worked in the various ‘traditional’ heavy industries some of the older ones used to work in are appreciated, and often provoke interesting and sometimes very informative discussion that can sometimes last quite a while before degenerating into the usual beer fuelled rubbish. The interest isn’t entirely from blokes, either. 
 

Certainly I do not experience any mockery or negative comments.  What does happen occasionally is that I am used as a consultant for the suitability of xmas pressies for grandkids/nephews, or asked to value the Hornby Dublo 3-rail Duchess of Montrose set in the attic, with the inevitable disappointment that it’s not worth much at all, followed by a temporary reduction in my credibility as an antiques valuer, which I can live with...

[PatB]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

When it comes to "the image of the hobby", I think its possible to get way too neurotic.

 

Its a hobby,  it does nobody any harm, it makes quite a few people happier, if you enjoy it, pursue it, if you don't, don't.

 

Many other hobbies come in for a bit of mild mocking occasionally too, its just human nature to mock "the other", and provided mild mockery is where it stops, it does no harm.

 

My other hobby is cycling, and that elicits plenty of mockery and, thankfully exceedingly rarely,  irrational hatred, for reasons that really do baffle me - far worse than the mild mockery that goes with being a "train spotter", because once in a blue moon it is backed up with use of a motor vehicle as an offensive weapon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yeah, but that's cycling. Even as a cyclist myself, I find cyclists to be worthy objects of amusement . 

[Ruston]

9 hours ago, steve1 said:

Ruston,

 

Read and learn.

 

https://www.atgshaving.com/

 

There are several others but I have found this to be the one best suited to me.

 

steve

Well I never! Funnily enough, they have their own equivalent of what's being discussed right here. https://www.atgshaving.com/threads/whats-your-mates-think-about-your-shaving-interest.18422/

[rob D2]

Yes, that’s mainly about scalextrix isn’t it ?

 

I don’t think perceptions have changed much, everyone still finds it amusing around me.

 

BUT, the world has changed , we have all this #bekind etc etc. You are simply not allowed to take the p1ss out of anyone or anything  anymore or the thought police cancel you ..this may have saved further ridicule .

[Captain Kernow]

23 hours ago, steve1 said:

Ruston,

 

Read and learn.

 

https://www.atgshaving.com/

This amazes me.

 

I had absolutely no idea that the activity of shaving could be a 'thing', (except perhaps amongst the barbering fraternity).

 

I am so taken aback that I don't even know if I am being flippant or genuinely amazed when I write this.

 

23 hours ago, steve1 said:

There are several others

You mean, there's more?

 

Sorry, I really don't mean to cause offence, but I've led a sheltered life* and it's a lot to take in.

 

* Even more sheltered than I thought, evidently.

 

[steve1]

5 hours ago, Captain Kernow said:

This amazes me.

 

I had absolutely no idea that the activity of shaving could be a 'thing', (except perhaps amongst the barbering fraternity).

 

I am so taken aback that I don't even know if I am being flippant or genuinely amazed when I write this.

 

You mean, there's more?

 

Sorry, I really don't mean to cause offence, but I've led a sheltered life* and it's a lot to take in.

 

* Even more sheltered than I thought, evidently.

 

 

Yes, it really is a 'thing', to use the modern parlance. As a hobby, it is probably a cheaper one than railway modelling, and it takes up less space. From a practical point of view, using a double edge razor and blades, a brush and real shaving soap, will be much more cost effective than expensive carts and canned goo. The icing on the top is that you get a much better shave too.

 

steve