jbaakko
Diesel Detail Freak
There seems to be a couple levels of model railroader out there.
The first is the one who scrounges and builds a lot of his own stuff. It makes me feel old, but when I was a kid Model Railroader actually ran articles on scratchbuilding your own steam loco. It used pre-made wheels and motor but much of the body was made of brass, carefully cut and formed by the modeler. These guys scratch build cars and buildings etc, etc.
The second, and probably most common modeler is the ordinary Joe, I guess you'd call him the middle class modeler. He's the fellow buying Athearn blue box freight cars, plastic buildings and locos in the $50 to $150 price range. He may be into DCC and/or other electronics, but he's built his system over time, and it took some doing to get there. I'm guessing most of us folks here fall into that group.
The third group is the high end modeler with lots of disposable income. These are the guys collecting expensive Lionel. They like G scale locos that go for $1K each. They buy brass with sound and DCC and have it custom painted. The true high end modelers hire somebody to build their layout for them.
In truth, the 3 groups probably blur together. But when I look at products and read ads, they do seem to target one of the 3 personalities. When I see locos that cost $500 and passenger cars that are $60 each, I know I'm not the person they're trying to sell this stuff to.
How about group 4 & 5?
4 being the scratch builders who don't scrounge, but, take something like an Athearn SD40-2 and bash a Kaslo cab onto it.
5 the person who buys all the el-cheepo train sets and sets the up to run in circles and is perfectly content that way.
Huh...?