model railroading enthusiasts are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars

[paultccrn]

The Wall Street Journal has an article about model railroaders spend 100s of thousands of dollars on their train rooms.

In my own case, just like I measure my locomotive's speed in N-scale miles-per-hour,  the only way I am spending 100s of thousands on my train room is if I convert my budget to N- scale  dollars !


--Paul
President of the  Grand Rapids, Newaygo, & Lakeshore Railway..  now transplanted to Oro Valley Arizona

[sd45elect2000]

I spent a thousand or better on the Fox Valley Hiawatha sets and ribbed boxcars so yeah ,I did my part to make this true.

[cjm413]

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[jereising]

Typical media result.  If one or two do it, then it must be everyone doing it and a trend is born.

Everyone gets tarred with the same brush.

And the people who are writing the stories are just going through the paces.  There's no journalism any more, the paper is being written by interns because they could get them cheap.

And the newspapers continue to decline.

[thomasjmdavis]

The original trainrooms were all under $10,000, but the Wall Street Journal used the Bachmann MSRP calculator to get a current valuation.

[NorsemanJack]

I would really like to visit some of these rooms.  I do have a friend who built a new four car (plus) garage with an upstairs train room.  Really nice set up!  He used to be an N scaler but decided to move to two rail O.  I sometimes think about how much N scale could have been put into that place.

[Mark W]

Typical media result.  If one or two do it, then it must be everyone doing it and a trend is born.

I just read the article.  The headline and it's content are totally accurate; "These model railroading enthusiasts are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to build train rooms in their homes."

While I'm sure Paul had no intention of implying otherwise and just wanted to share the article, that missing clarification is a key part of it.  I know we all like to blame the media and shout "fake news" and "journalism is dead" these days, but I assure you journalism is very much alive and well.  It's our collective laziness that [mis]reads headlines and jump to our own biased conclusions rather than invest time to read, comprehend, and reflect.

_{(Jim, I'm not directing this at you, or anyone.  I'm certainly guilty of headline surfing myself at times.)}

Full article:
https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/model-railroaders-are-parking-their-train-sets-in-souped-up-spaces-141816

[ednadolski]

'... spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to build train rooms in their homes."

Curious, what it costs to build a full-size replica caboose (with real trucks!) to put a model railroad layout in (see 3:32):

[TLOC]

If I could include the cost of remodeling my spousal unit’s horse stable to accommodate 4 more horses and a trainroom then  I can fit the profile. IMO it is an interesting article that was ok and dropped some big names. Rarely would the WSJ interview the “normal” modeler like we have here.
 TomO

[Maletrain]

The OP says it was an article in the Wall Street Journal, while the link goes to MansionGlobal.com.  those publications are read by people who have money.   Neither is like the New York Times bemoaning the waste of money by rich people who could be donating all that money to the needy.  And, there is still a substantial difference in readership between the readers of the WSJ and that Mansion Global publication.  But, if this does get picked-up by one of those left-wing "news" sources for the masses, it may yet be twisted into "proving" that all of us are too self-centered to be allowed to keep all of our money.  So, I am glad somebody at least warned me what might be on the news about my hobby by next week. 

I'll stop there, so as not to get into politics.

[jdcolombo]

One's investment in model railroading creeps up on you.  Say you spend $1000 per year (less than $100/mth) on the hobby.  That's not hard to do - a half-dozen engines, 20 pieces of rolling stock and you're there, and we haven't included the cost of layout scenery, wiring, switch machines, a computer to run JMRI, throttles, DCC command stations and boosters, dcc replacement decoders, SOUND decoders (at $90 a pop), etc., etc.

Do that for 30 years, and you've spent $30,000, and that's not taking into account lost investment returns over that time period.  I'll bet that if we all sat down and inventoried what we have at current replacement cost, a LOT of us would exceed $50,000, and there would be more than one might think who would hit $100,000.

On the other hand, as a friend of mine observed, all hobbies can be expensive.  Go look at what you can spend on golf clubs.  Or coin collecting.  Or whatever.  And at least with model railroading, we end up with a LOT of stuff to show for our efforts! 

John C.

[CRL]

There are folks who spend “yacht” or “vacation home” money on their hobby, so this isn’t beyond the realm of possibility. I probably have “slow bass boat” money involved, spread out over 30 years... but I won’t say invested because it’s more of a sunk cost. It’s just another form of entertainment.

[MK]

The OP says it was an article in the Wall Street Journal, while the link goes to MansionGlobal.com.

I can assure you it's the same article from the Wall Street Journal.  You can read it easier on Mansion Global as the WSJ's website will ask you to login or sign up.

If you look at the beginning of the article you'll see "BY CANDACE TAYLOR  |  ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON AUGUST 6, 2020  |  THE WALL STREET JOURNAL"

ANY hobby is just a black hole to throw money into.  How much you want to throw into it is up to you.  Even something as mundane as doll houses can cost a fortune.

[jpwisc]

I’m well under the WSJ amount, but talking to some friends, I can see how true it is. One friend was at roughly $90k on his layout in 3 years, and hadn’t started scenery. Another layout I operated on had $25k just in Digitrax equipment, the layout was well over the WSJ total. Another friend has no layout and still has a hefty 5 digits sitting in boxes in his future layout room. I just remembered the friend that has $8000 in ore cars sitting in boxes.

I was just talking with my dad (also a model railroader) about this. His club does monthly group purchases from Walthers. One club member has been spending $1000 a month as long as everyone can remember. The gentleman doesn’t have a layout.

It adds up over time. I would guess in my hobby career I have spent $30,000 or so on model trains. I’ve recouped a lot of that selling things off over the years, and it’s still way cheaper than what I’ve spent building Jeeps for off-roading.

[cfritschle]

Here is a quote from the article that appears to me to put it all in perspective:

"Even the most elaborate model railroads are usually relegated to no-frills spaces like basements or attics. But a few railroading enthusiasts have taken a different track, devoting entire rooms in their homes to the hobby and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to outfit these spaces for trains. Some even build separate structures for their layouts, or convert swaths of their backyards to so-called garden railroads."

That paragraph followed the paragraph that referred to model railroaders Neil Young, Tom Hanks and Rod Stewart.