Railway Modelling - A Hobby turned Luxury?

[westernviscount]

14 hours ago, The Johnster said:

You may, especially if you can afford it, practice your hobby in a luxurious way, and you may go on luxury holidays in luxury hotels, live in a luxury home, drive a luxury car, and sail a luxury yacht, but your hobby occupies the same part of your life as an ordinary hobby does for an ordinary bloke who doesn’t do anything luxury because he can’t afford it.  How much you enjoy it depends not on luxury, or how much you spend, but on how well your railway satisfies your needs, for operating, or using the layout socially for set multi-persion fixed sessions, or building things, or whatever it is that is the main reason for getting into it; love of trains is as good as any.  Obviously, a certain level of poverty will prevent you taking it up, and it would be very unfair on any dependents, but I do ok and I’m on about £60 a week after rent and bills; I try to budget £40 a month for the trains, though the truth is nearer £50.

 

Well Johnster I have to say I agree with everything you say in your last post. I also said further up that although perhaps a luxury, or defined as luxury, a hobby is also a necessity.

 

Some have a very utilitarian view of others, judging them in certain instances for indulging in anything other than eating, being warm and raising their children. Poverty does not mean the will for self expression disappears. We are keen to impose frugality and self denial on others to levels we ourselves could not tolerate. 

 

I wish I had more money and space to create a bigger railway and regret the necessity for others to repeat the cliché "the hobby can be as expensive or inexpensive as we want"...it is nowhere near as expensive as I would like it to be! However, I doubt my methods would change and my attention would still be drawn to small detail and perhaps render a larger layout unnecessary for my satisfaction. Constraint can be a motivator for creativity as long as it is not completely constricting. I have written about this elsewhere and cite the Oulipo movement which uses self-imposed constraints to stimulate art and literature, one example being the book A Void by George Perec which completely avoids the letter E (except the front cover with the author's name of course!!). 

 

5 hours ago, cypherman said:

Toy trains and no matter how detailed they are or what they cost are just that. They are toys for older boys and girls. Just toys.

This is interesting to me Cypher. They don't feel like just toys to me and perhaps this diminishes the importance of the hobby to some people. Just a thought of course.

[Dunsignalling]

3 minutes ago, sncf231e said:

I consider a car a luxury, so I sold mine and bought a handful of trains. And now I can spent monthly extra on trains not having to pay for using the car.

Regards

Fred

Depends where you live and where you want to get home from in the evening. 

 

Not having a car round here would greatly reduce ones choice of social and employment opportunities outside the proverbial nine-to-five.

 

John

 

 

[westernviscount]

12 minutes ago, sncf231e said:

I consider a car a luxury, so I sold mine and bought a handful of trains. And now I can spent monthly extra on trains not having to pay for using the car.

Regards

Fred

 

This sums up how luxuries are not universal but are based on individual circumstances. One person luxury is another's necessity. So are hobbies a luxury? for some yes, for others perhaps not. 

[westernviscount]

11 minutes ago, Dunsignalling said:

Depends where you live and where you want to get home from in the evening. 

 

Not having a car round here would greatly reduce ones choice of social and employment opportunities outside the proverbial nine-to-five.

 

John

 

 

I couldn't be without a car where I live in relation to my work and I would say not having a car would impact a great deal more folk than those who can make choices about their work and the lifestyle types.   

[Chris M]

45 minutes ago, Monkersson said:

I work in procurement for injection moulded items, which the company I work for have made for us in China.  The costs to do such things here are absolutely huge compared to outsourcing it.  

 

I made comment on it in another thread a while back https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/144756-Heljan-announce-class-45-in-oo/&do=findComment&comment=4468739

 

 

 

You cant compare Pecos' costs against Farish, we dont know the factors in setting the sale price of their items

You can compare the price of a Peco van to a Farish van. The British made Peco van is £9.30 while the rrp of a Chinese made Farish van is either £20.95 or £21.95. As neither company has gone bust both must be covering their costs. I agree the comparison may not be simple because the Farish vans are from much newer tooling. They have much finer detail, are more accurate  and there are a greater variety of vans available. I think both offer good value for what they are as they are aimed at slightly different market sectors.

My point is that in the real world it is possible to manufacture items in the UK and be very competitive on price if you have the correct set up. From my experience there are a lot of hidden costs in dealing with China. It’s much easier to get things exactly right first time when the designer and toolmaker are sitting in the same building as the requester of a new model.  Today pretty much all the expertise, especially for tool manufacture, is in China so anyone trying to set up model making in the UK today would very much struggle due to lack of local knowledge in that field. 

[Jeff Smith]

Important to retirees is to include some element of purpose in life.  Hobbies of one sort or another often fit this bill.  Choice of hobby or pastime is likely to be dictated by financial constraints or lack thereof.  So a frivolous or luxurious purchase by one person could be totally out of reach for another......

Edited August 26, 2021 by Jeff Smith

[Nearholmer]

Now to poke a wasp's nest:

 

We established yesterday that the median salary in the UK is c£31k (if you are a man, in full time employment). So, half of men in full time employment are paid less than that, and half are paid more, and given that the mean salary for the same group is £37k, it is safe to assume that some are paid a lot more, thereby "dragging up the average".

 

Most of this conversation has focused on finding enough money to indulge in a hobby, but I will now suggest that a significant proportion of people, plenty enough to influence the way suppliers act, has more than enough disposable income to pursue a hobby, and to allow the odd "luxury" purchase. Furthermore, some of those people are pensioners - analyses suggest that average disposable income for pensioners is almost exactly the same as for employed people, because most employed people have much higher housing costs than most pensioners, so as well as pensioners counting their pennies, there are pensioners out there counting their thousands.

 

Could it be that, in model railways as in so many other things, the better-off half of the population "set the market", in this case by being prepared to pay good money for high-fidelity toys that then look pretty expensive to the less well-off half?

 

And, thats without mentioning the likes of Lee marsh Models, who clearly cater to a very narrow segment of the market.

 

[My spelling gets worse by the day!]

Edited August 26, 2021 by Nearholmer

[The Johnster]

I think I was assessing hobbies, and by extention railway modelling, from a philosophical veiwpoint, and arguing that it is more of a first world 'need' than a luxury.  This is a different approach from Maslow's (of whom I'd forgotten; tx for the reminder, Nearholmer).  Model railways would come within the 'self actualisation' level of his pyramids, and this is IMHO a level below 'luxury'.  One would not consider that the acquistion of a life partner is a luxury!

 

I live in an inner city close to a major bus route, and have a Welsh Assembly Governement bus pass, so a car for me would be as much of a luxury as a Lear Jet; my ability to own, maintain, fuel, and insure each of those items is identical.  I believe that a hobby that I can afford (admittedly not by any handsome margin, and with the approval of The Squeeze, who thinks that because there is a bed in the railway room it is a bedroom) that enriches my existence, is of immense value in helping me cope with my chronic derpression, and keeps my brain from ossifying, or at least I think it does...  It is not essential to my existence, but my life would be diminished without it, so it is in no way a luxury by the dictionary definition nor is it trandcandental by Maslow's definition.  I certainly feel unashamed and guiltless in having it, but not entitled to it. 

 

My pensions are paid for and earned, and the local council pays some of my rent in the form of Housing Benefit; none of that benefit public purse money is spent on railways or anything other than rent, ever.  So I feel that I have no moral reason to not spend money on trains, or going up the pub, or internet/TIVO/smartphone, all of which would be ridiculous to describe as needs in the 3rd world.  They are not needs here, they are wants, I want them, can afford to pay for them without disadvantaging anyone else since nobody is in the perilous situation of being dependent upon me, and if anyone thinks this is wrong, well, you are at liberty to think whatever you like, but you can probably work out what I think you can do with your thoughts...

[fezza]

To put this in perspective, I was in a well known Derbyshire model shop last week. You could pick up a good second hand Lima diesel from £35 and Lima coaches from £10. There were also plenty of track and wagons for pocket money prices.

 

Even if you are on a low income those should be affordable to most. In some respects I think I had more fun as a youngster when I had to scout for bargains and to do the detailing myself. I can afford to buy better now, but I'm not sure modelling is so satisfying.

 

One day I'll build a retro layout set in 1990 using only secondhand items produced around that date. I reckon that would be a great concept for a nostalgic exhibition layout 

Edited August 26, 2021 by fezza

[Monkersson]

3 hours ago, Chris M said:

You can compare the price of a Peco van to a Farish van. The British made Peco van is £9.30 while the rrp of a Chinese made Farish van is either £20.95 or £21.95. As neither company has gone bust both must be covering their costs. I agree the comparison may not be simple because the Farish vans are from much newer tooling. They have much finer detail, are more accurate  and there are a greater variety of vans available. I think both offer good value for what they are as they are aimed at slightly different market sectors.

My point is that in the real world it is possible to manufacture items in the UK and be very competitive on price if you have the correct set up. From my experience there are a lot of hidden costs in dealing with China. It’s much easier to get things exactly right first time when the designer and toolmaker are sitting in the same building as the requester of a new model.  Today pretty much all the expertise, especially for tool manufacture, is in China so anyone trying to set up model making in the UK today would very much struggle due to lack of local knowledge in that field. 

A correctly set up company in the UK can keep prices keen, like Peco for instance.  They have been going for nigh on 80 years, have their own premises, have their own facilities to produce tooling, have their own injection moulding machines etc etc.  So prices can be kept a decent level.  However look at newly tooled items such as the Bullhead points, they are a good bit more expensive then the equivalent streamline points, because even the raw materials to produce the tooling are much more expensive than they used to be. 

 

You compared a wagon tooled 40 plus years ago vs a decade old Farish van, that isnt a true cost comparison as they are chalk and cheese.  If Peco were to release an identical wagon to match a Farish one, I wouldn't be surprised if it was more expensive than the Farish one,  purely on tooling costs alone.

 

Bachmann too have their own factory and equipment, but they are a very large company compared to Peco, and each part of that empire has to justify its existence, justify that it will bring in enough money to cover that slot in the factory which could be making far more profitable items.  That could explain some of the costs which seem at first glance to be considerably higher than Peco's.

 

Dapol relatively recently started making models in the uk again , as far as Im aware its their line of generic rtr wagons that are constantly churned out both as their own releases, and commissions.  The sheer number of these produced keeps the costs low, but they aren't newly tooled high fidelity items.

 

There are many costs involved in bringing back production, or even starting afresh in the UK, which would significantly increase the cost of any newly designed model made here.  Add to that the ridiculous amount of red tape and sheer amount of time to get things done in the UK, then its no wonder new manufacturers go abroad.

 

As I'd mentioned, I'm involved with costs for injection moulding, by no means am I an expert, but those costs involved to produce what we demand in a new wagon, never mind a locomotive, produced in the uk would make your eyes bleed.

[Nearholmer]

29 minutes ago, Monkersson said:

There are many costs involved in bringing back production, or even starting afresh in the UK,

Strikes me that the biggest cost might be to train and educate the skilled personnel to do it.

 

I’ve no knowledge of the skills needed for what we are talking about here, but I have watched heavy electrical kit manufacture vastly reduce in the U.K. over the past c40 years, and I know that it would be a monumental task to rev that back up again, largely because so very few people here now know how.

 

Its not even as if dragging old guys out of retirement to teach new starters would help very much, because the processes, techniques, and materials have all moved-on well beyond where they were even ten years ago …… while the U.K. has been ‘out of the game’ in many areas.

Edited August 26, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Jeff Smith]

The injection moulding tooling is a one-off cost to be amortized over the production run.  The bigger the run the smaller the element.  I would have thought the labour intensive assembly and finishing would be the major cost.

[Dunsignalling]

2 hours ago, Jeff Smith said:

The injection moulding tooling is a one-off cost to be amortized over the production run.  The bigger the run the smaller the element.  I would have thought the labour intensive assembly and finishing would be the major cost.

That would come quite a way into the process for a company starting from scratch (as even Hornby would be after so long away from actually making trains), Setting up a complete manufacturing facility would need to come first unless production could be outsourced within the UK in a similar way that they do it using Chinese contractors.

 

But could it? Are there even still firms in the UK with capabilities that could be employed in making model trains? Probably, but I very much doubt that they are the kind of operations that could (or would want to) produce them in the required volume at prices even 5% of participants in this hobby could/would stand. 

 

I'm very much afraid that, having effectively abandoned this (or any other) industry, getting back in will require much determination and very deep pockets. Anybody trying it would also need to be able to stand alone (or very nearly so) for several years before earning a profit.

 

Sticking with Hornby as our example, their existing business doesn't make remotely enough money to finance successfully bringing even a fraction of their model railway production back in-house within the UK. 

 

Sorry, but to all intents and purposes, without massive external changes to global economics, off-shoring was (and is) a one-way street.

 

John 

Edited August 27, 2021 by Dunsignalling

[Jeff Smith]

Perhaps much improved 3D printing is the answer to the tooling but still would require hand finishing.

 

I don't know where the Peco 009 stock is made but the prices seem high.

 

Regarding kit prices the Peco Parkside ex-Ratio GWR 4 Wheel coach kits (I believe with revised tooling) are approximately half the price of the Peco O-16.5 4 wheel coach kits.  Both are roughly equivalent in content, including metal wheels.  Perhaps it is a sales quantity effect?  I hazard that both are produced in the UK though!

[F-UnitMad]

10 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

so as well as pensioners counting their pennies, there are pensioners out there counting their thousands.

Ah, the O Scale scene.

Reminds me of tales on RMweb of Pensioners moaning there's no OAP discount off Show tickets, then walking out of said show later with several Heljan O locos.... There certainly seems to be a lot of money swilling around in O Scale at the moment. I'm amazed how various HJ diesels sell out, at ever-increasing prices at that. 

Maybe the bubble will burst as all these elderly owners succumb to the inevitable - and clueless family who just want shot of grandad's 'toy trains' because he spent their inheritance money on himself, the selfish old goat - start swamping the market with cheap second-hand stuff  

[PMP]

6 hours ago, Jeff Smith said:

 

 

Regarding kit prices the Peco Parkside ex-Ratio GWR 4 Wheel coach kits (I believe with revised tooling) are approximately half the price of the Peco O-16.5 4 wheel coach kits.  Both are roughly equivalent in content, including metal wheels.  Perhaps it is a sales quantity effect?  I hazard that both are produced in the UK though!

They are UK made/assembled.

 

What many ‘commentators’ around the hobby fail to realise are the basic overheads for uk companies. The simple fact that a 25-65 year old earning the Uk minimum wage that’s £8.91/hr £350/wk £18.5k/yr has to be paid, is somehow irrelevant to them. 

 

[HonestTom]

12 hours ago, fezza said:

To put this in perspective, I was in a well known Derbyshire model shop last week. You could pick up a good second hand Lima diesel from £35 and Lima coaches from £10. There were also plenty of track and wagons for pocket money prices.

 

Even if you are on a low income those should be affordable to most. In some respects I think I had more fun as a youngster when I had to scout for bargains and to do the detailing myself. I can afford to buy better now, but I'm not sure modelling is so satisfying.

 

One day I'll build a retro layout set in 1990 using only secondhand items produced around that date. I reckon that would be a great concept for a nostalgic exhibition layout 

 

For my channel, I did a bunch of videos on low-budget modelling, including painting and weathering older models. I kept a list of what I spent on everything, and it is entirely possible to get all the stock you need for a decent start for less than £50. Admittedly some of the items I got were a real bargain, but nothing impossible if you're prepared to shop around.

 

- Lima 94xx tank. Decent all-rounder, looks okay, runs well: £7 (eBay)

- Triang 16 ton mineral wagons x3. £3, £3.50 and £5 (swapmeets)

- Lima vent vans x2, £4 each (swapmeet)

- Mainline oil tanker, £4 (swapmeet)

- Hornby Prestwin, £3 (antique shop)

- Hornby standard BR brake van, £3 (swapmeet)

 

Total: £36.50. 

 

For that, I have a loco and 8 wagons, which is more than enough for a micro-layout. I intentionally limited myself - the loco is in BR black, so I went for BR steam era-liveried wagons. If you're not fussed about time and place, you might be able to do better. I've certainly seen beaten-up old wagons go for £2 a piece.

 

How about the rest? I'm going to say, for the sake of argument, that a good starter layout is a 3-2-2 Inglenook. It doesn't take much space, it doesn't require any complicated wiring or control and it can easily be set up on a temporary basis. I have a Hornby train set controller that I picked up a couple of years ago at a swapmeet, complete with power clip, that I picked up for £8. It's nothing fancy, but it'll do the job to begin with. Based on the prices at my local model shop, I reckon the following is a realistic price for track. I'm going to Hornby on the basis that that's what shows up second-hand cheap, and I'm going with nickel silver rail:

 

2x points, £5 each

2x double straight, £1.50 each

1 half curve, £1.00

1 single straight, £1.00

A couple of those tiny little bits of straight track, you know the ones, 75p each

 

Total: £16.50

 

So, track, power and rolling stock: £61. Really, to get started in a new hobby, that's not much. I reckon if you set yourself a budget of £100 and were frugal, you'd have a pretty good shot at getting a complete layout going. Nothing too fancy, but also nothing out of the reach of most people, especially since you don't have to buy everything at once.

[Phil Parker]

10 hours ago, Monkersson said:

A correctly set up company in the UK can keep prices keen, like Peco for instance.  They have been going for nigh on 80 years, have their own premises, have their own facilities to produce tooling, have their own injection moulding machines etc etc.  So prices can be kept a decent level.  However look at newly tooled items such as the Bullhead points, they are a good bit more expensive then the equivalent streamline points, because even the raw materials to produce the tooling are much more expensive than they used to be. 

 

You compared a wagon tooled 40 plus years ago vs a decade old Farish van, that isnt a true cost comparison as they are chalk and cheese.  If Peco were to release an identical wagon to match a Farish one, I wouldn't be surprised if it was more expensive than the Farish one,  purely on tooling costs alone.

 

 

The tooling is only part of the cost. I've talked to several manufacturers, and the biggest part of the cost for each individual model is labour. All those delicate bits of brake gear to be stuck in place cost money. 7 different colours in a BR crest require 2 different trips to the tampo machine (they can only do 6 colours). As the market demands greater detail and more fiddly bits, the price goes up.

 

8 hours ago, Jeff Smith said:

Perhaps much improved 3D printing is the answer to the tooling but still would require hand finishing.

 

Because the Rails 3D printed vans are so much cheaper than similar things injection moulded?

 

As many cottage industries have found, 3D printing doesn't scale up easily. I have spoken to several who are at capacity but produce tiny runs of products. As for hand finishing, you are back to scary UK labour costs if you want that.

 

8 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

But could it? Are there even still firms in the UK with capabilities that could be employed in making model trains?

 

I seen to recall the Little Loco Company trying to find a UK manufacturer, and failing because we just don't do that sort of thing any more.

 

 

[rob D2]

Well if anything more than necessity is a luxury , there’s not much point going on is there ?

if you just go to work to provide food/ heating / shelter , it’s a pretty dull existence .

[Nearholmer]

Put in the time honoured way: Man cannot live by bread alone.

 

Model railways weren’t quite what was in mind, but it does make the point that there is more to human needs than the utilitarian, the mechanical necessities; there are spiritual needs too.

 

 

 

Edited August 27, 2021 by Nearholmer

[fezza]

23 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Put in the time honoured way: Man cannot live by bread alone.

 

Model railways weren’t quite what was in mind, but it does make the point that there is more to human needs than the utilitarian, the mechanical necessities; there are spiritual needs too.

 

 

 

Too true - model railways have helped me through difficult times on my life. So have people I've met through railways.

 

If I hadn't spent so much time and money on trains over the years I might have ended up under one.

[Nearholmer]

One of several studies https://www.karger.com/Article/FullText/503571

 

I’m not sure about prescribing hobbies as a cure for mental ills, which seems a bit like giving people decent office chairs only after they’ve got chronic lower back problems from years sitting in crap ones, but they are definitely a great preventive. As someone said back up thread, human beings have evolved to work with their hands, and to be problem-solvers, so a person whose work doesn’t give those things needs our sort of hobby to prevent a troubled mind, just as a person whose work involves no physical exercise needs to do something heavily physical to get their heart pumping a few times a week.

[Sir TophamHatt]

There's also another aspect to this, which is whether you want to spend as much money on something.

 

I'd like to complete my Bachmann S-Stock but no way am I paying £60+ for a coach.  I could afford it but don't want to.

I'd like to buy a replica Thomas the Tank Engine prop but at £1200, it's not worth that much to me.  Even though I could afford it.

 

Perhaps I'm still in the mind of value for money overriding having the product.

[PMP]

4 hours ago, Sir TophamHatt said:

.

 

Perhaps I'm still in the mind of value for money overriding having the product.

‘Value’ for money is always a personal perception though, and doesn’t take into account things like product and manufacturer  costs. £60 for a contemporary detailed coach is becoming normalised and a price the hobby will need to get used to.

However there will always be pure luxury goods where value is only in the eye of the beholder…

 

 

[Dunsignalling]

7 hours ago, Sir TophamHatt said:

There's also another aspect to this, which is whether you want to spend as much money on something.

 

I'd like to complete my Bachmann S-Stock but no way am I paying £60+ for a coach.  I could afford it but don't want to.

I'd like to buy a replica Thomas the Tank Engine prop but at £1200, it's not worth that much to me.  Even though I could afford it.

 

Perhaps I'm still in the mind of value for money overriding having the product.

Value judgements will always be personal, and if anyone is going to make us face them these days, it will, more-often-than-not, be Bachmann. These two items have just prompted you to draw a line in the sand beyond which you aren't willing to venture. Welcome to the club. 

 

Being able to afford an item doesn't necessarily come into it. We become accustomed to particular categories of product being "worth" an approximately consistent amount and revising that opinion can take a while.

 

It only seems like yesterday that widespread horror was expressed at the prices of r-t-r models of large steam outline locos breaching  the £100 barrier. That £100 has moved to the verge of £200 in not-very-many years, and small tank engines are close to passing through what was many people's former "limit" for big ones. It's slightly scary how quickly one can "get used to" that kind of thing!

 

Some of Bachmann's coaches have been in the £55 to £65 zone for a good while (LMS Inspection saloon, Hawksworth Autocoach, new Thompsons, Portholes), and they looked very expensive when Hornby were putting out comparable quality (Hawksworth corridors, Maunsells, LMS P3, LSW rebuilds) for nearer £40!    

 

Hornby's coach pricing is now hovering around the £50 mark. It would be interesting to know if that purely reflects increased costs or it includes an element of Hornby responding to perceived headroom provided by Bachmann's pricing.

 

If it's any consolation, I'm expecting my eagerly anticipated new Bachmann Bulleid coaches to emerge at prices significantly north of £70 a throw! 

 

Will it stop me buying any? No, but it will probably make me forego most of the crimson/cream models that are set to dominate the early releases, and wait for more of the green ones I prefer. By then, though, the prices will doubtless have risen again.

 

John

 

Edited August 30, 2021 by Dunsignalling