Railway Modelling - A Hobby turned Luxury?

[PaulRhB]

5 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

Whatever floats your boat. But please don't equate collecting with modelling, they are two separate hobbies.

Nah, I do both  

Sometimes I start collecting then I do a bit of modelling to go with it . . . That’s the problem with defining something that really doesn’t need defining apart from to settle mild cases of obsession with defining  

 

 

 

[Dunsignalling]

And even we who do regard ourselves as modellers indulge "non modelling" aspects of the hobby at times.

 

Having an interest in model trains, railway modelling, and collecting overlap, but aren't the same thing.

 

It's an a la carte hobby and we all pick and choose our favourite "dishes" whilst avoiding the dislikes until we need them to link together things we do enjoy.

 

John

 

 

[PaulRhB]

So next conundrum is this modelling or restoration? Is there a difference?

 

 

 

Does it matter?  

[PaulRhB]

1 minute ago, Dunsignalling said:

It's an a la carte hobby and we all pick and choose our favourite "dishes" 

Just making me hungry John!  

[Zomboid]

4 hours ago, TheQ said:

As for modelling there definitely has been an increase in " assemblers" rather than builders, buying Ready To Plonk buildings, trees, etc.

My interest is in the modelling, so purchase of ready made item's is limited, I'm not interested in Metcalfland

There is a big skill in assembling a scene though. A well designed and laid out Metcalfland could well be a more convincing model than a collection of superbly scratchbuilt structures put down in a bizarre and unlikely configuration.

 

In a way it could be a bigger challenge to create a believable scene using only RTP items than to do so using scratchbuilt structures.

 

But then that's why these options exist isn't it?

[Nearholmer]

1 hour ago, Steamport Southport said:

But please don't equate collecting with modelling, they are two separate hobbies.

Since when?
 

As PaulRhB has said there is plenty of “repair and resto” in a lot of collecting, and many of us build retro layouts, which involve all the usual woodwork, wiring, and track-laying crafts, plus varying degrees of building the “scenic setting” from scratch. 
 

Herewith a train that I very definitely collected, in a station that I am pretty sure I modelled (in the vintage style), it being scratch built, apart from the canopy, which is from a kit.

 

 

I painted the passenger too, she having lost most of her paint since the 1930s, but that’s “resto”, and the mechanism of the loco needed work to re-quarter the wheels and prevent them moving on their axles, which is “repair”.

 

It is possible to have a “purely collecting” approach, buy it, display or store it, and some very early items, and very mint items do get treated like that by some people, but nothing like all ‘vintage and collectible’ gets treated like that.

 

It requires a lot of thought to draw firm lines between facets of the hobby and, IMO, all that thought leads to nothing but headaches, actually and metaphorical.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 25, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Halvarras]

4 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

 

I found the solution for me was to develop an interest in a particular bit of railway, at a particular period, and try to confine purchases to things that "fit in". Most of what I buy therefore has significance and context for me/my layout/future layouts/display cabinet. 

 

I still fall for the occasional irresistible  "lollipop", and probably always will, but I long ago learned that most of them will amuse me for a week or two, sit in their boxes for a year or two, then get traded in!

 

Most magazine reviews of such things are nowadays met with my reaction, "that's lovely, but what would I do with it", and I know I'm getting there!

 

John   

 

Have to agree with all of this John, my situation almost exactly. However I undermined the intention by ending up with a 'particular bit of railway' operable in five 'particular periods' (some of which span just a few months in order to try to keep a lid on things) when I had planned to have a maximum of three, and there's no doubt at all in my mind that it's the availability of superbly detailed RTR models which are largely responsible - it was too easy. If I'd had to build the majority from kits or via heavy-duty conversions I doubt very much the extra two would have happened. There was also an accident of timing - the RTR explosion occurred just as I reached a stage in life where money, for the first time, wasn't the issue it had been.

I realised rather late in the day that I had become too adept at justifying purchases - the penny finally dropped and justification criteria tightened up accordingly, but I was still prone to mulling something over, rejecting it on cost and/or relevance grounds then later on it would crop up as an irresistible bargain somewhere and it was game on again!

But I have arrived at a point where there is nothing left to be manufactured which I 'need'. Well, apart from a Class 120 DMU I suppose........

 

[Jeff Smith]

5 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

It requires a lot of thought to draw firm lines between facets of the hobby and, IMO, all that thought leads to nothing but headaches, actually and metaphorical.

Agree entirely, this topic has been done to death several times.

 

Regarding restoration, this is a contentious topic in many collecting fields.  Some items are apparently best left in their original but maybe deteriorated state to preserve the patina and value.  Others apparently benefit from skilled restoration, think paintings.

 

I have recently built several 30+ year old loco kits, did I destroy their collectability?  Should I have left them as whole kits?

 

Collecting and modelling is a spectrum!

[AndrueC]

6 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

 

Suddenly made me think of my outdoor hobby: cycling.

 

Only a tiny few hobby cyclists build their own bikes from parts; all make adjustments; a high proportion swap-out components to make their bikes "ideal" for them; the number who scratch-build bikes from raw materials can be counted on the fingers of one foot (actually, possibly 1:5000 does have the skill and kit to do it).

Or my outdoor hobby- golf. Very few golfers manufacture or adjust their own equipment. Some do but it's unlikely they cast their club heads(***) and they probably buy shafts off the shelf but they mix and match and some bend the clubhead to adjust the loft.

 

But 99% of golfers buy all their kit and pay a ridiculous amount for it. My clubs would cost about £2,500 to replace with new (considerably less second-hand of course) and it's questionable how much of a difference they make compared to a set of Chinese made clubs that cost about £200(*).

 

Most hobbies are about as expensive as you want them to be. You can buy all you need to play golf for less than £300(**) or you can buy clubs from a 'known' manufacturer, an electric trolley and GPS/laser range finders and have over £3,000 of stuff permanently sat in your car boot.

 

(*)Maybe. Expensive clubs are more forgiving of really bad shots. You might have wanted to send the ball 150 yards but you fluffed it. Cheap clubs might only send it twenty yards. Expensive clubs might send it 100 yards. Also confidence is a major factor in golf. Playing a set of Callaway clubs probably makes me more confident than playing some random brand no-one has ever heard of.

 

(**)Do not ask me about the cost of golf shoes 

 

(***) Actually a lot of bad golfers do cast their club heads but I meant a different kind of casting

Edited August 25, 2021 by AndrueC

[Nearholmer]

2 minutes ago, Jeff Smith said:

Regarding restoration, this is a contentious topic in many collecting fields.

Its certainly become a topic of discussion around old toy trains in the past decade or more, and the trend has certainly tipped in favour of ‘leave well alone unless pretty badly damaged’, but fortunately many commercial models, even quite early ones, exist in quantities such that a heavy-handed rest on one example doesn’t rob the world of the ability to see an untouched one.

[Dunsignalling]

41 minutes ago, Neil Phillips said:

 

Have to agree with all of this John, my situation almost exactly. However I undermined the intention by ending up with a 'particular bit of railway' operable in five 'particular periods' (some of which span just a few months in order to try to keep a lid on things) when I had planned to have a maximum of three, and there's no doubt at all in my mind that it's the availability of superbly detailed RTR models which are largely responsible - it was too easy. If I'd had to build the majority from kits or via heavy-duty conversions I doubt very much the extra two would have happened. There was also an accident of timing - the RTR explosion occurred just as I reached a stage in life where money, for the first time, wasn't the issue it had been.

I realised rather late in the day that I had become too adept at justifying purchases - the penny finally dropped and justification criteria tightened up accordingly, but I was still prone to mulling something over, rejecting it on cost and/or relevance grounds then later on it would crop up as an irresistible bargain somewhere and it was game on again!

But I have arrived at a point where there is nothing left to be manufactured which I 'need'. Well, apart from a Class 120 DMU I suppose........

 

Sounds like we've both gone through much the same process, Neil. I've not entirely reined in the tendency to fall in love with something wholly irrelevant but I have got much better at it. 

 

Only problem I've noticed since is that there was so much relevant stuff being produced for a while. That has subsided somewhat of late, but It never quite exhausted my slush fund.

 

As for period, I've been stretching mine somewhat (blame the Hornby a/s MN) and I'm beginning to think I really need to split it into two.....

 

The 3-car Swindon Cross Country 120 unit is the one thing I will buy, whenever and by whoever it gets produced and all the potential price might dictate is waiting a while before ordering a second one! 

 

John

Edited August 25, 2021 by Dunsignalling

[newbryford]

I collect models to do some modelling [*] on.

I have three pushbikes that I have changed bits on to suit myself.

I play golf. Left-handed.

 

That's me going to burn in hell then.......

 

[*] weather/repaint/detail/saw in half/glue together/whatever.

 

 

[Zomboid]

33 minutes ago, Jeff Smith said:

have recently built several 30+ year old loco kits, did I destroy their collectability? 

 

Quite possibly, but they are yours to do with as your see fit.

 

It puts me in mind of the forthcoming Iron Maiden album (bear with me...). As well as the usual download for £10 and so on formats, they've done a fan club special version of it; a wooden box with a bunch of other things as well as a CD copy of the album. It's very expensive (£333), and looks to be a really nice thing. But a bunch of the fan club members who bought one are not even going to open it. I can't fathom why anyone would spend £333 on a charming wooden box and then not even open it - so it'll have resale value in a few years to other people who in turn won't open it? I mean, it's everyone's choice and that's fine, but they might as well fill the box with gravel if it's never going to be opened...

[Dunsignalling]

Schroedinger's CD. It will simultaneously be playable and non-playable until you open it. 

[Steamport Southport]

43 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Since when?
 

As PaulRhB has said there is plenty of “repair and resto” in a lot of collecting, and many of us build retro layouts, which involve all the usual woodwork, wiring, and track-laying crafts, plus varying degrees of building the “scenic setting” from scratch. 
 

Herewith a train that I very definitely collected, in a station that I am pretty sure I modelled (in the vintage style), it being scratch built, apart from the canopy, which is from a kit.

 

 

I painted the passenger too, she having lost most of her paint since the 1930s, but that’s “resto”, and the mechanism of the loco needed work to re-quarter the wheels and prevent them moving on their axles, which is “repair”.

 

It is possible to have a “purely collecting” approach, buy it, display or store it, and some very early items, and very mint items do get treated like that by some people, but nothing like all ‘vintage and collectible’ gets treated like that.

 

It requires a lot of thought to draw firm lines between facets of the hobby and, IMO, all that thought leads to nothing but headaches, actually and metaphorical.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But that's not what I'm talking about.

 

I'm talking about collecting things as mint/near mint to sit on for a few years and then sell on and make money. Not to use.

 

 

[AndrueC]

25 minutes ago, newbryford said:

I play golf. Left-handed.

There's a chap in my club who plays most of his clubs right handed but putts left handed.

 

One of my friends plays right handed but grips his clubs with the left hand on the bottom and his right forearm on top. His index is currently 16.

[Steamport Southport]

8 minutes ago, Zomboid said:

Quite possibly, but they are yours to do with as your see fit.

 

It puts me in mind of the forthcoming Iron Maiden album (bear with me...). As well as the usual download for £10 and so on formats, they've done a fan club special version of it; a wooden box with a bunch of other things as well as a CD copy of the album. It's very expensive (£333), and looks to be a really nice thing. But a bunch of the fan club members who bought one are not even going to open it. I can't fathom why anyone would spend £333 on a charming wooden box and then not even open it - so it'll have resale value in a few years to other people who in turn won't open it? I mean, it's everyone's choice and that's fine, but they might as well fill the box with gravel if it's never going to be opened...

 

I'm surprised it was that price. Should be double....  

 

But people who are "band" FC members are usually odd sorts.

 

I know one who paid something like £10,000 to fly to a gig in Germany in their 'plane. Could have flew by EasyJet for a fraction of the cost.

 

 

 

Jason

[PaulRhB]

I buy collectible things to remove the cellophane or tissue and open them to make the others more collectible. Doing my bit for the economy. Thing is I’ve got it wrong several times and they’ve still been collectible years later and I had to sell them for more than I paid for them 

 

 

[newbryford]

3 minutes ago, AndrueC said:

There's a chap in my club who plays most of his clubs right handed but putts left handed.

 

One of my friends plays right handed but grips his clubs with the left hand on the bottom and his right forearm on top. His index is currently 16.

 

I'm actually right-handed, but play left - just like Phil Mickelson.

So if it's good enough for him................

[Nearholmer]

10 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

I'm talking about collecting things as mint/near mint to sit on for a few years and then sell on and make money

If you’re talking about modern production, and at huge risk of falling global into the trap of attempting to create definitions that I’m warning everyone else away from, I’d call that “stashing” rather than collecting.

 

I know many true collectors, and they hate selling things, in fact they will only sell a thing if they find an example in better condition, and even then they need counselling to get over the trauma. Proper collections usually only come to market when the collector moves to the great shunting yard in the sky.

[D9020 Nimbus]

7 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

I'd say that, if anything, the hobby has got considerably cheaper in real terms

I don't believe this is true. I've been comparing prices from November 1972 to now. There is at least one item that was available then and is still — the Peco N gauge NE brake-van: it now costs 15 times what it did then.

 

The Hornby Railroad Compound is 22 times the price of a Hornby 4-4-0 for the same period (the L1); the current Hornby A4 is 28 times the price of the Wrenn A4 from that period.

 

A gallon of petrol is approximately 18 times what (4-star) petrol was then. Only the Peco brake-van has gone up in price less than this; even Hornby Railroad has increased significantly more. As for wages, I don't know what the average salary was then, but the typical minimum wage was £1/hour — now the "national living wage" is 9 times that…

 

By comparison, photography has got considerably cheaper — an SLR camera with standard lens at the bottom of the range is now only 3 times what it was then.

 

I'd submit that railway modelling is 2 to 3 times more expensive in real terms (in general) while photography is about ⅓ the cost compared to 1972… 

[Dunsignalling]

6 minutes ago, D9020 Nimbus said:

I don't believe this is true. I've been comparing prices from November 1972 to now. There is at least one item that was available then and is still — the Peco N gauge NE brake-van: it now costs 15 times what it did then.

 

The Hornby Railroad Compound is 22 times the price of a Hornby 4-4-0 for the same period (the L1); the current Hornby A4 is 28 times the price of the Wrenn A4 from that period.

 

A gallon of petrol is approximately 18 times what (4-star) petrol was then. Only the Peco brake-van has gone up in price less than this; even Hornby Railroad has increased significantly more. As for wages, I don't know what the average salary was then, but the typical minimum wage was £1/hour — now the "national living wage" is 9 times that…

 

By comparison, photography has got considerably cheaper — an SLR camera with standard lens at the bottom of the range is now only 3 times what it was then.

 

I'd submit that railway modelling is 2 to 3 times more expensive in real terms (in general) while photography is about ⅓ the cost compared to 1972… 

My comparison was the cost of a current large steam-outline r-t-r loco set against the typical weekly earnings of a skilled worker in the building trade in this area, the two having been roughly on a par in 1960.

 

I somehow doubt there are many carpenters who would get out of bed for £200-ish a week.

 

John

Edited August 25, 2021 by Dunsignalling

[Nearholmer]

U.K. average wage is now c£37k/year, and assuming deductions at 40% that gives somewhere over £400/week take home pay.

[D9020 Nimbus]

25 minutes ago, Dunsignalling said:

 

I somehow doubt there are many carpenters who would get out of bed for £200-ish a week.

 

I'm sure there are far less skilled carpenters around now than then, too… and your comparison is only valid if you are a skilled worker in the building trade in your area. The average hourly rate is 15 times what it was in 1972, so an A4 Pacific is twice as expensive compared to then; the Peco brake-van is the only item whose price now is the same as then in real terms; everything else is at least 50% more expensive (Hornby Railroad) or more (the rest).

 

Average referred to is median hourly rate. Source: official statistics.

Edited August 25, 2021 by D9020 Nimbus

[MoonMonkey]

For me, 'model railways' or 'railway modelling' or whatever term we use, is an umbrella or catch-all phrase.  It covers the generic activity which people pursue in their own unique ways.  So, while people may wish to have silos within this catch-all to compartmentalise themselves and others into, there is still merit in having a generic phrase that people understand.  Even non-modellers will know generally what one means if they say their hobby is 'model railways'.  Does it matter if their view is entirely aligned with our own personal takes on the matter?  They'll probably create unfavourable stereotypes in their minds regardless.

 

I would think of my hobby as being model railways or railway modelling.  My own spin on this, my sub-category, is to try to create a scene that I could photograph and fool the human eye into wondering if it is actually real, regardless of what materials or products I use - plus the aspect of managing that in a way that my child can still get joy from, without destroying everything as soon as he touches it.  

 

The caveat is that if I did it professionally, it wouldn't be a hobby.  I guess a hobby is a leisure past time rather than 'work'.  But then there could be a hobby that generates an income for me.  But I'll stop there on that one!

 

To come to the core of the thread though... is it a luxury?  For me, it is simply a voluntary activity that is done on my own terms for pleasure.  But is it a luxury to engage in that activity?  Personally, I see each little spell of time that I get to indulge in my hobby as a little bit of luxury... a luxury that I can take a little time out for myself rather than chasing everything else in life that I may 'have' to do.  A luxury that I have time to do it, and I have the ability to do it.  A luxury that, frankly, I can do it if I want to.  And thinking about it that way, I appreciate my health, wellbeing and situation a little bit more – which is, these days, a bit of a luxury.

 

The questions are rhetorical by the way, me indulging in some uninformed amateur philosophy about which I am entirely uninformed and ill-equipped to espouse.  I’m not looking for answers, by the way!!!!! 

 

Right, I think I’ll head to the pub to waffle about something else, I need to get out more!