
Victorian Era Drones: How Model Trains Transformed from Cutting-Edge to Quaint - bryanrasmussen
http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/how-model-trains-transformed-from-cutting-edge-to-quaint/
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gumby
I love how the technology label of the age is used throughout culture to
indicate "modernity" and "cool". Everything today must be "digital" (whether
that makes sense or not -- consider the rush to "digital voting" in the US in
2001 even though it only, and only potentially, addressed one perceived
problem and introduced plenty of others).

You can see this happening to trains in the 1920s and thirties, when the high
speed trains of the era adopted a "flyer" moniker (e.g. the "Philadelphia
Flyer" express train -- and now "Flyer" apparently lives on as the name of a
model train system). The term arrived as flight began to take over as the cool
new transportation.

In the Atomic age we had "atomic fireball" cinnamon balls and the "bikini"
swimsuit.

But my favorite of all is a toy waggon from the 1930s called the "radio flyer"
which, though a simple kids' wagon, managed to adopt two high tech trends in
one name, though it had nothing to do with either.

~~~
skykooler
I wonder if this is why the Philadelphia hockey team is called the Flyers?

~~~
mhurron
Doubtful since the Flyers started as a franchise in 1967.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Flyers#Colors.2C_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Flyers#Colors.2C_name_and_logo)

It was the result of a naming contest.

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JoeDaDude
"For the 21st-century kids stuck in the back seat of that car, trains are
noisy, antiquated, and irredeemably boring..."

Having been to a model railroad show or two, every model train/town/yard is a
model from the 1950's, 1940's or 1930's. Nowhere did I see any bullet trains
or maglevs or modern cities being modeled. I always found this depressing, as
if the hobby only had a past but not a future.

~~~
gumby
My kid got an ICE (German high speed rail --InterCity Express) train set a few
years ago as a present. It came out only at christmas. He was utterly
uninterested.

I'm Gen X and my dad wanted me to be into trains, but honestly I never cared
much either. His toy steam engine was cool, and powered many inventions, but
all the screwing around with train sets to end up with just making it go
around and around...yawn.

~~~
Symbiote
My dad bought me and my sister a train set, when I was about 7 years old, and
she was 6.

We both enjoyed playing with it, for a few years. Partly, it was fine to race
the trains against each other, and to see how we could reconfigure a limited
amount of track into anything more interesting than an oval. But, more
importantly, _I think it was the only "toy" my dad would join in with_.

We visited some preserved railways (there are many in the UK). In the 1990s,
the old guys volunteering to work in these places didn't mind if a parent took
some 10 year olds round the workshops. There would usually be an entire
locomotive, disassembled down to the chassis, and we could walk underneath in
the inspection pits. I could see _big_ engineering up close, and it wasn't
impossible to understand. I remember being unable even to lift one of the
massive spanners they used.

Plenty of people work on restoring old cars, trains and planes. When I was
about 12 I realised the old train men were rather tiresome -- streams of
disparaging remarks about anything newer than 1970, and "electric" was almost
a swear word. The engineering was fascinating, but they mostly stood around
and grumbled about modern times. I don't think that's the case for people who
like old cars and planes -- they tend to appreciate new cars and planes as
well.

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VLM
The analogy of ham radio and model trains is nearly perfect. Its almost a
perfect concern troll as seen in hand wringing ham radio discussions. All
thats missing from this article being a ham radio concern troll is a
completely unrelated demand at the end. Traditionally the ham radio articles
end with "... and thats why we need to change the whole repeater coordination
system to benefit me personally" or "... and thats why we need to change the
whole radio contesting system to benefit me personally".

We're transitioning from a "large cheap real estate" world to something where
we're a lot poorer (someone is certainly collecting a lot of money off it).
Also each generation is a little lower on the socioeconomic scale on average
which is a reversal of past centuries of growth.

Therefore hobbies that require a lot of physical real estate space and a
modest pile of cash such as model trains or ham radio (at least HF work) or
serious fine/artistic carpentry are all going to be kind of elderly gentleman-
ish. I would theorize recreational gardening would fit on this list. Possibly
more exotic cooking techniques fit this, are most sous vide system owners over
50, I bet they are. I bet almost all people remodeling their kitchen spending
$50K to do it with commercial grade appliances are over 50.

Who is more likely to have $1000 and an empty basement, a 25 year old college
grad living in his parents basement and driving Uber for beer money unable to
pay his student loan or ever own a house or have children, or a 50 year old
software engineer living in a burb house purchased before the worst of the
housing bubble struck? Then take a wild guess what the customer look like at
WoodCraft store or HRO (ham radio outlet) store or the friendly local
independent hobby train store. Its beginning to have a demographic impact
where store opening hours reflect retired people more than the few working age
customer's preferred hours, seriously you guys call yourself a retail store
but you close at 5:30pm every day? Well there's always Amazon if I need a saw
blade or whatever...

Now as long as humanity continues to supply a continuous stream of 50 year old
guys who've "made it" financially, those hobbies will continue in perpetuity.
In fact ham radio is growing at an impressive rate. The "elder" population is
generally predicted to be increasing. I would predict as the odds of "making
it" get ever worse for college grads and ever better for skilled craftsmen and
building trades, more stereotypical blue collar hobbies for old men will
continue to grow, probably good times ahead for recreational carpentry and
maybe not so good long run for ham radio.

~~~
amelius
Then again, with VR goggles you could still build a wonderful model train
track in your 2 m^2 bedroom.

~~~
skykooler
I would love to run a VR model railroad that let me build and detail
everything like a real one.

~~~
felipemnoa
1: [http://www.auran.com/](http://www.auran.com/)

2: [https://train-simulator.com/](https://train-simulator.com/)

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nickhalfasleep
Model railroads are interesting little altars to civilization and economics.
Railroad expansion, popularity, and use were a by-product of the industrial
revolution. And to build a small part of that in your basement demonstrates
how those pieces go together.

Personally, it can be a great broad spectrum application of engineering,
history, art, programming, electronics, and machining.

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Animats
"Model Railroading is Fun". Said so on the cover of every issue of Model
Railroader magazine for decades. They're trying too hard.

Check out Minatur Wunderland, the most elaborate model railroad in the
world.[1]

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACkmg3Y64_s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACkmg3Y64_s)

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FireBeyond
Apropos of anything else, simple model trains are not cheap. You can easily
spend hundreds of dollars on a single train. And hundreds of dollars on track.
Which you either have to have somewhere to set up, or be stuck with
dismantling steadily on the floor.

A bunch of work to build something that runs around in the carpet on your
floor in a slightly elaborate loop? Not so fun.

And so then you might dedicate some space, or a room, or garage to building a
scene.

Now you've got more and more time, attention to detail, and oh yes, much more
money for building models, decorating, etc.

What might have been worthwhile in older days is now an older person's hobby
because it's _really easy_ to spend thousands, if not tens of.

------
VLM
I would also toss the word "masculine" into the discussion. In the old days it
was very unusual for a kid not to grow up exposed to a culture of masculine
hobbies. Of course Dad had some tools and a couple sawhorses in the garage,
all Dads did. Exposure to "Dad Hobbies" at age 5 leads to interest in "Dad
Hobbies" at age 30. I personally remember swinging a hammer on the plywood
underlayment of a HO gauge model railroad layout and lots of hours going ham
radio stuff with my Dad, and my kids are having the same experience. In my
youth that was a standard experience, today that is every unusual.

Culture changes, and the vast majority of children today are like "Dad? What
is a Dad? You mean mommies friend?" or "Dad hobbies? Dad has no hobbies
because Mom took all his money and his house in the divorce.". Naturally those
kids are not going to grow up interested in "Dad Hobbies" other than by
accident. There are other interesting aspects of the de-masculin-ization of
childhood.

~~~
Retric
I think you are confusing 'Masculinity' with culture. Pink used to be the
manly color as blood is red and you tone that down for polite company you get
Pink. Now the manly color is closer to construction yellow or flannel red.

Construction equipment is still a classic boy's toy, where trains are just
outside our experience.

~~~
VLM
So you're claiming the number of boys growing up today with a table saw in the
basement is constant or increasing because nuclear families are in decline. I
donno about that claim.

~~~
ska
No, they are suggesting that masculine activities change over time just like
all of culture has, for all of time.

Given the mens-rights flavored text in your original, I doubt you are actually
looking for engagement here, but giving you the benefit of that doubt:
Defining "masculinity" in ways that start to sound like "how much better
things were when I was a kid" is an almost certain sign you are being
superficial in your analysis. If you dig in a little bit (and there is a ton
of interesting writing on this and related) you'll find there is a lot to
learn.

To your particular scenario: I know men who spend time with kids programming
robots. Are they somehow less masculine than other men I know spending time
woodworking with kids? Or others who spend time cooking and baking with kids?

If you believe they are, please defend. Honestly, I'd like to hear the
reasoning because it sounds laughable to me.

~~~
VLM
Your examples are very peculiar in that in the workplace female programmers
are the minority, and some google searching shows female head chefs are nearly
unheard of in the food service industry, therefore sure obviously programming
and being a chef are culturally obviously very masculine.

I think your point is something like its very Millennial to have no
"traditional crafts and skills", low agency, low levels of self help, etc. I'd
believe that. You do make a convincing point. See the rebellious response of
the Maker movement which decades ago would have merely been called learning to
be a responsible "grown up".

The problem with your culturally/economically masculine examples of
programming and being a chef is you can pull a graph from images.google.com of
something like "children living with mother only" and apparently it varies
staggeringly with race and time. Such that when I was a kid less than 1 in 10
of my peers grew up with a single mom and no Dad in the picture, whereas half
of black kids today have no "Dad" in the house. So it matters not that we're
discussing mere subjects like carpentry vs arduino programming, no Dad at all
means neither subject will be in the picture.

I'm sure there are lost feminine arts in the culture. Sewing homemade
clothing. Being a stay at home mom. But those were not article topics anyway.

Edited to further point out we're arguing over which binary is the only binary
factor to matter, whereas my point is regardless of how much "Dad Hobbies"
have cratered culture-wide, getting rid of 40% of Dads from kids lives over
the same time period is just going to make whatever decline there is, 40%
lower yet. I simply don't understand what could be controversial about that.

~~~
true_religion
I am extremely suspicious of your sudden switch to calling out black single-
parents as the doom of masculinity.

I'm further more extremely cautious of any approach that wants to talk
_solely_ about harm done to men, due to losing 'traditional' masculine
hobbies, but not talk about the similar near total loss of 'feminine' hobbies
and the cottage industry that widely drove revenue for stay-at-home mothers.

~~~
ska
I tried to entirely sidestep this, but you are probably right to call it out
this way.

I wasn't sure if it was just awkwardly unintentionally worded, or a bit of
semaphore for a load of unpleasant nonsense - so wanted to calling it the
latter and burying any discourse about the potentially interesting issue of
the perception vs. reality of "masculine roles" (and if that even makes
sense).

~~~
true_religion
I had wanted to give the benefit of the doubt as well, because as another
poster suggested---there is a grain of truth within his statements.

Then I remembered that 'grain of truth' is how these sort of philosophies
continue to survive, and insinuate themselves into common discourse. So I am
ignoring that single grain an focusing on the rotten conclusions that veer
_too_ closely to the sort of rhetorical landmines that have historically been
damning to society.

If you are going to call out a specific ethnic group, or push politically
sensitive buttons then you need to bring out arguments with a much higher
standard than 'grain of truth'.

I hope this isn't too much of a rant, I simply wanted to clarify because
usually I am the one helpfully playing devils' advocate but I simply couldn't
do so this time.

