montanan
Whiskey Merchant
There is no question that the hobby, along with everything else is being affected by the economy and the product availability problems. While the dollar has lost almost 90 percent of its purchasing power since the early 1960's and even before, there is no question that the lack of product availability is a major factor in the decline of model railroading. Retailers cannot sell what they don't have to sell. This same problem obtains for the materials I use in my custom leather manufacturing business, where the quality of tanned leather has declined dramatically over the years. The suppliers can't sell me what they can't get from the tanneries. In my case, the result has been to increase the waste on a side of leather, which increases my costs. My business also depends on people with disposible income, rather than being a necessity.
The costs of model railroad items is just out of control, compared with what it was even 10 to 20 years ago. If I had to replace my rolling stock today, I just couldn't do it! Yes, we've had wonderful improvements in such things as sound and DCC, but at what price points?
It would be wonderful if we could bring the manufacture of model railroad equipment to this country, but I doubt it would do much more than drive up prices even more. I wish I had an answer, but supposedly smarter people than I can't even come to an agreement that will keep America from going over the "cliff". Hopefully, things will improve...
Regardless of all this, I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy, Healthy, and hopefully a Prosperous New Year.
I will have to agree with you about the cost. My layout started about 20 years ago. A lot of planning went into it and thanks to the planning, I was able to stockpile quite a lot of what I needed to build it. Now that I am getting down to the finer details, it seems to be getting a lot more expensive than I remember. Most of my locomotive we bought in the $60 range back then (Atlas). I do still operate DC as I am a lone operator. If I were starting aver today I might consider DCC as lcomotives now are coming out as DCC models or DCC ready. I wouldn't even want to think of what it would cost in todays prices for what I have already done. My track is handlaid for the most part which is an enormous savings money wise. Trying to find commercial track and turnouts (I use code 70) has put me into sticker shock if I can even find it. Sure don't get as much bang for the buck as we used to.