The sad fact of the matter is that over the past 10-15 years the majority of the hobby has been evolving away from craftsman model railroading to simply a hobby involving the running of store bought miniature trains...rather like a smaller version of playing with Lionels!
All the traditional magazines are either in decline, or gone from the scene already. Even Model Railroader, long the hobby's premier publication, has (until very recently) published less and less about modeling. Over the same interval, its circulation has declined by about 40%!
Indeed, if one looks around carefully, it is becoming increasingly obvious that there are two rather different hobbies in play currently. Today's major manufacturers have certainly gone over to the side of the RTR element, together with offering mainly "collectors" type huge locomotives, instead of more work-a-day engines suitable to operating layouts. In broad terms, MR caters to those mainly interested in playing with store bought RTR trains, collecting the over-size locomotives and those folks with low skill levels. RMC and the Gazette, on the other hand, are still about the traditional form of the hobby. If you doubt this, just look at a cross section of the advertisers in each. The many craftsman companies don't appear in MR at all. Beyond the magazines, it is as if the craftsman aspect of the hobby has gone underground. Many of the smaller companies seem to operate and advertise largely by word of mouth, while increasingly special craftsman meets are being held around the country that get little fanfare in the hobby's larger publications. At the same time on the Internet, forums largely limiting themselves to advanced modelers and craftsmen have sprung up and their participants no longer, or only rarely, show up on the larger, more general interest, forums.
It will be very interesting to see where these developments take us over the next decade.
NYW&B
