Modeller survey 2023

[MrWolf]

Likewise, on average I get to ten a year,  interspersed with swap meets and collectors fairs and I don't think that I go to that many compared to other people.

[tomparryharry]

This is some interesting information indeed. As we're mostly anonymous, does this survey influence, or modify, any retail, or manufacture?

 

One thing we've all noticed over the past  couple of years, is manufacturers having grown-up conversations with prospective clients/modellers. It's only a little while back, when the prevailing attitude was :- "We're the only game in town, and that's 'yer lot!"

 

If this survey is part of the ongoing Glasnost, then count me in.

[Ravenser]

1 hour ago, 298 said:

 

I'm amazed by the response to exhibition attendance, having thought that my work and family commitments would put me low down but it seems it's actually another thing that I'm better than average at. 

 

Perhaps it's because regular exhibition attendees are too busy at then to fill in the poll, aren't reflected in the responses, or because RMweb users get their full from looking at modelling here and don't feel the need to attend? Curious.

 

 

We've had two years of the pandemic, and the exhibition circuit is still markedly reduced from what it was in 2019  (No Stevenage, no York, no Railex, no Peterborough last year. And so forth) .

 

A rough count up says my show going has halved compared with pre-pandemic, and I seem to be going to a much higher proportion of the "available opportunities"

 

The survey result may be an accurate reflection of where we are now , as opposed to where we were in the decade before the pandemic

[MrWolf]

Overhead yesterday at Kendal was that a number of traders wouldn't be attending a certain upcoming show due to the organisers asking £2,000 per stall and past  visitors saying that they wouldn't be going because the entry fees and price of fuel to get there have increased too much.

[New Haven Neil]

On 28/01/2023 at 16:02, TheSignalEngineer said:

The two tone green livery on 47s lasted through to 1977.

 

Liverpool Grime Street, winter 76/77 - I started College there in September 76 so no earlier than that.  47 358

 

 

[New Haven Neil]

4 hours ago, john new said:

Not a 47 but I recall one of York's 08s lasting in absolutely filthy green well into the 1970s. I have a feeling I photographed it on slide film so that would be at least as late as 1974. Unfortunately my slide collection is inaccessible for the moment.

 

Liverpool again, 1977

 

[slow8dirty]

I'm surprised by the low level of club membership, it always seems like a large number on here are club members, otherwise I'd put it down to a skew towards Rmweb.

[Michael Hodgson]

On 28/01/2023 at 15:35, Ian J. said:

There's almost always one person or thing that fits the average, but rarely more than one. A bit like stereotypes...

The chap with 2.4 kids.

[Michael Hodgson]

9 minutes ago, slow8dirty said:

I'm surprised by the low level of club membership, it always seems like a large number on here are club members, otherwise I'd put it down to a skew towards Rmweb.

That question may have different meanings to different people.  In any case, there's a bit of a difference bewteen your local club and specialist support organisations like MERG, the O Gauge Guild, 3mm Association and of course does one count the collectors clubs?

[Michael Hodgson]

2 hours ago, MrWolf said:

Likewise, on average I get to ten a year,  interspersed with swap meets and collectors fairs and I don't think that I go to that many compared to other people.

I suspect those who attend a lot of shows are those who exhibit or are traders

[GreenGiraffe22]

On 28/01/2023 at 04:08, Andy Hayter said:

Perhaps the message to manufacturers is that if you build the models, people will buy them.  

 

This has always been my hypothesis. 

 

Really interesting results!! And really interesting reading everyone's initial analysis. 

 

One of my reasons for 'going solo' is chronic social anxiety, I meet people from here at exhibitions occasionally and there is much awkward silence! 😅 But I have developed a lovely train community on Twitter =)

 

Side note, I have absolutely no idea what TOPS is, so in my mind it looks like people are shouting for their locos to have blue ROOFS 😄 anyway, we don't need to spam up this thread with explanations, I'll do a Google.

[MrWolf]

You may well have a point there. If you think back to the old days of Tri-ang being the big manufacturer, they certainly seemed to pick some odd prototypes and a very eclectic mix at that. But they sold by the cartload and there's people buying, collecting, modifying them still, sixty years later.

[westerner]

Has the survey closed as I tried and was given the messages that it was no longer receiving responses.

[F-UnitMad]

4 minutes ago, westerner said:

Has the survey closed as I tried and was given the messages that it was no longer receiving responses.

It has. 

[TEAMYAKIMA]

Please forgive me if I am missing something. I have most but not all posts here but can't find any link to the results of this survey being published anywhere. Are they available yet? 

[Bucoops]

4 minutes ago, TEAMYAKIMA said:

Please forgive me if I am missing something. I have most but not all posts here but can't find any link to the results of this survey being published anywhere. Are they available yet? 

 

Here you go :)

 

 

 

[TEAMYAKIMA]

10 hours ago, Bucoops said:

 

Here you go :)

 

 

 

 

Many thanks, I have no idea how I missed that 🤔

[The Johnster]

On 29/01/2023 at 18:46, MrWolf said:

You may well have a point there. If you think back to the old days of Tri-ang being the big manufacturer, they certainly seemed to pick some odd prototypes and a very eclectic mix at that. But they sold by the cartload and there's people buying, collecting, modifying them still, sixty years later.

 

I think Triang chose their prototypes on the basis of what they could make with standardised parts, rather than what they thought the enthusiasts wanted, and Hornby Dublo were much the same.  In those days it was only the most 'serious'* of modellers who gave a flying wotsit about period or location, and they were people who would scratchbuild what they needed anyway.  Yer 'average'* modeller had a permanent layout on a baseboard with scenery and buildings. and chose his stock on the basis of an express passenger loco, a secondary passenger loco, a mixed traffic tank engine, a goods 0-6-0, and an 0-6-0T for everything else.  So, Princess Elizabeth, L1, 3MT tank, 3F, and Jinty, all bases covered.  The opposition, Hornby Dublo, gave you an A4 or Duchess (both as scale compromised as Princess Elizabeth), N1, 4MT tank, and eventually took on the Jinty with an R1.  Both introduced 08s at around the same time,  extended their ranges (Castle, 8F, Britannia, B12, Bullieds) at around the same time, and introduced diesels, (31, 20, Deltic, Metrovick) at aound the same time, none of which was in any way an attempt to provide modellers with a range of products that a modeller could use to recreate a location or even a region.  And BR liveries were the only game in town.

 

 

*I have no idea what these terms mean except in the most generalised sense, and I don't like using them, but they are good for conveying my intended meaning.

[MrWolf]

1 hour ago, The Johnster said:

 

I think Triang chose their prototypes on the basis of what they could make with standardised parts, rather than what they thought the enthusiasts wanted, and Hornby Dublo were much the same.  In those days it was only the most 'serious'* of modellers who gave a flying wotsit about period or location, and they were people who would scratchbuild what they needed anyway. 

 

That may still be the case, based around collectors and people who just want to run some trains round.

One diesel, two dozen liveries, how many versions of the Scotsman?

 

1 hour ago, The Johnster said:

Yer 'average'* modeller had a permanent layout on a baseboard with scenery and buildings. and chose his stock on the basis of an express passenger loco, a secondary passenger loco, a mixed traffic tank engine, a goods 0-6-0, and an 0-6-0T for everything else.  So, Princess Elizabeth, L1, 3MT tank, 3F, and Jinty, all bases covered.  The opposition, Hornby Dublo, gave you an A4 or Duchess (both as scale compromised as Princess Elizabeth), N1, 4MT tank, and eventually took on the Jinty with an R1.  Both introduced 08s at around the same time,  extended their ranges (Castle, 8F, Britannia, B12, Bullieds) at around the same time, and introduced diesels, (31, 20, Deltic, Metrovick) at aound the same time, none of which was in any way an attempt to provide modellers with a range of products that a modeller could use to recreate a location or even a region.  And BR liveries were the only game in town.

 

 

I suspect that the kind of thing that the majority want hasn't changed that much, just the level of sophistication. 

As for the big players making duplicate models....

[newbryford]

On 29/01/2023 at 13:38, Mallard60022 said:

Not a 47 or an 08, but there was a Class 20 that was a celebrity around Wellingborough and area in 1977/78, as it retained Green Livery (filthy and faded). CBA to look up what it was.

P

 

Help here?

 

[Ravenser]

On 27/01/2023 at 15:22, Keith Addenbrooke said:

Very interesting, a big thank you to @AY Mod for running the survey.  Recognising we are a skewed sample of the market, it may nonetheless be an encouragement to manufacturers that very nearly half of us respond to rising prices by buying the stuff anyway.   Analysis might allow that to be cross-referenced with how much stuff (locos, carriages and wagons) we have - ie: do those with more keep spending, or those with less?  I’m not going to speculate, especially as slightly over half of us also said we’re spending about the same - so how that correlates with responses to rising prices might be interesting.

 

Simply out of curiosity, I worked out this - using an approximate mid-point from each range for “How many locos do we have?” (995 responses).  I’m not trying to be precise - I just wondered what the distribution looked like:

 

% of responses x total responses x locos owned (approximate) = ?

 

19.8% x 995 x 125 = 24,626  (estimated mid-range 100 to 150)

21.6% x 995 x 75 = 16,119

18.2% x 995 x 40 = 7,244

12.9% x 995 x 25 = 3,209

16.1% x 995 x 15 = 2,403

 

Totals 88.6%, so:

 

11.4% x 995 x 5 = 567

 

Total locomotives = 54,168, of which the top group (100+) would have 45.5%

 

This might suggest to me (as someone close to the other end of the scale*) a good reason why manufacturers keep producing variants and upgrades of established models, so fleet operators can add to their rosters.

 

...................

 

Of course, everything I’ve just written could be completely wrong - which is why real data is more use than me guessing.

 

Have a good weekend everyone, especially @AY Mod, Keith.

 

(* Just working out how best to explain at home that I need at least 20 more locomotives to become an average enthusiast).

 

 

 

This post may be touching on one of the most important things to emerge from this survey

 

Stated the other way, 58.6% of the modellers own 24.8% of the locos...

 

(and some of the other 41.6% may have large kitbuilt fleets)

 

A clear majority of the hobby (roughly 3/5ths of it) are barely involved in the "RTR circus" . 75% of sales of RTR locos go to 40% of the modellers

 

We tend to assume that these days the hobby is dominated by and about RTR . But the RTR manufacturers must focus on that minority of the hobby that buys the great majority of the models they sell - not the majority of the hobby that doesn't

 

This may account for the sense of dislocation and disassociation that pervades the hobby . Everyone  seems to be convinced that they personally are not typical of the hobby as a whole. What really drives the hobby is some other chap: who is completely different from me, whom I've never met, and who is found on the other side of the hill. Someone about whom I can only speculate....

 

We hear often that the RTR market in OO is really about "the collectors" , a legendary race who don't like taking their models out of boxes and do so only to put them in glass cases. It's not about us. It could never be about us...

 

In reality "the collectors" seem to dwell among us . They are planning a layout - in fact generally 2 or 3 layouts. In the mean time they are going to buy a Titfield Thunderbolt set, three AS 37s , a Jones Goods and an LNER dynometer car this year. To go with the Hardwicke and Hattons LNWR coaches they bought last year. Are Hattons going to do a run of their coaches in HR green? Pretty please? [I'm aware HR coaches were generally matchboarded not panelled]

 

(I really must stick a decoder in my Hardwicke this weekend and get it running . Should look good on a 2 car blue/grey set of Mk1s as a steam special)

[spamcan61]

2 minutes ago, Ravenser said:

A clear majority of the hobby (roughly 3/5ths of it) are barely involved in the "RTR circus" . 75% of sales of RTR locos go to 40% of the modellers

 

 

I'd say that's 'RMWebbers who responded to the survey'  not 'the hobby' which is a whole different kettle of fish, the numbers would be very different if you ran the poll on some of the Facebook railway mdoelling groups I hang out on.

[Andy Hayter]

@Ravenser

I am probably being thick this morning - not an unusual situation - but I am failing to follow your logic unless it is based on an assumption that those with large fleets of locos have a large holding of kit built locos.

 

That may be right but equally could be completely wrong.  We are not all Tony Wright and in my case very few of my locos are kit built - through I will confess that I have a number to be built, that I did not include in my count.  In fact the OH has more kit or scratch built locos (built by me) on her layout than I have on any of mine .

 

From some posts I glean that there are some here who purchased for example large fleets of Lima locos back in the 80s and 90s.  

 

The seemingly endless slow decline of kits and kit manufacturers would suggest that ongoing rtr is going to be by far and away the predominant source of motive power - inside RMWeb and outside. 

 

How does your logic work if a large majority of the locos owned by those who own a lot of locos were to be in fact rtr and not kit built?

 

Your point on collecting is however well made.  There is not and I suggest cannot be a hard line between modellers and collectors.  Again a confession that I hold small collections of models bought for 2 layouts that are now unlikely to be built.  That clearly makes me a collector/modeller.   The nature of our hobby is and has been that models and manufacturers come and go - so buy now or repent in the future.  Or hope perhaps that the item comes up on Ebay 20 years in the future.

 

As far as collecting goes, it may be models bought for a layout in progress but not yet taken out of the box, through models bought for projects that are firmly on the back-burner, through to the person who buys models to put in a display case through ultimately to the out and out collector who has or aspires to have every model meeting a particular set of criteria in original and pristine packaging - preferably unopened.  

[RichardT]

1 hour ago, Ravenser said:

(I really must stick a decoder in my Hardwicke this weekend and get it running . Should look good on a 2 car blue/grey set of Mk1s as a steam special)

Absolutely prototypical for the steam specials that ran over the Foss Islands Branch/Derwent Valley Railway in York during the latter’s brief experiment with steam in the late 1970s.  (I suspect Ravenser knows that, but I just wanted to spell it out!)

 

RichardT

[JohnR]

1 hour ago, spamcan61 said:

I'd say that's 'RMWebbers who responded to the survey'  not 'the hobby' which is a whole different kettle of fish, the numbers would be very different if you ran the poll on some of the Facebook railway mdoelling groups I hang out on.

 

I agree. It would have been interesting to see the survey promoted more widely, eg within BRM, or even other magazines, in order to get a fuller picture.