Howdy friends.... I want to share with you the press release in reference to the "Worl's Greatest Hobby on Tour" Show held in Philadelphia last January. I think it speaks by itself. "The World's Greatest Hobby on Tour was the inaugural event at the new Greater Philadelphia Expo Center on January 3 and 4, 2009. On Saturday 24,690 people attended the show and on Sunday 15,562 people visited the show for a weekend total of 40,152 people." "While the show was a raging success it did overwhelm the expo center and the surrounding infrastructure. While almost 25,000 people attended on Saturday, thousands more tried to attend but couldn't due to the massive traffic jam on the roads to the show. Local traffic radio reported over a 5 mile back up on the route to the show and patrons reported traffic delays in excess of 2 hours to exit the interstate." (You can read the complete text here: http://www.wghshow.com/pressreleases/WGH%20Press%20Release%2040152%20att...)
With all due respect to Joe, whom has invested a fair amount of thought and time to produce a well written article, I have to admit that my personal response to these kind of question is a little more banal. Who cares?
When I see this topic espoused, I just can't wonder why.
Who cares if it survives or collapses in it's current or past form. Why does it matter? Does it matter to me?
If the entire hobby dies, what ever that means, does it mean that I won't be able to continue it? Of course not.
Does it mean that it would be harder to get things? Of course it would, but not impossible, and were the hobby industry (which I think is what a lot of this consideration is about, the industry around the hobby more than the hobby itself) to disappear overnight, I have learned enough, and have enough already, to be able to continue the hobby the way I would like to for the foreseeable future.
And that's what it's really about, you and your hobby. Hobbys are what they are to the individual. I don't think any hobby is bigger than the individual person who participates in it,
My hobby is not necessarily Joe's hobby, or for that matter anyone else's. I've moved and migrated from other hobbys, but those "activities" remain. Other people still find them of interest or discover them for the first time, however for what ever reason they simply don't interest me as they once did and they are no longer important enough to me to devote time to.
People's aspects of how they enjoy their hobby may overlap, but my experience so far indicates that no two people are exactly alike when it comes to how they enjoy their leisure (hobby) time. Some people, for instance may enjoy this type of discussion, but personally I'd rather spend my time elsewhere (I understand the irony of that statement as I type it).
Yeah.. its amongst my list of least favorite forum topics that I still find my self getting sucked into. Of course, at the top of my least favorite forum topics are topics about forums.
The first time I saw this topic raised on another forum, I mistakenly thought it was a new discussion and was mildly interested! When I realized that the same topic gets beat to death about 4 times a year on that forum I lost any interest I might have had previously.
I enjoyed Joes editorial and I think it's great to have gotten the subject out there and out of the way. Now when anyone want's to discuss the "state of the hobby" we can tell them there was an article on the subject, here's the feedback column, knock yourself out. :o)
BlueHillsCPR said:
... I think it's great to have gotten the subject out there and out of the way. Now when anyone want's to discuss the "state of the hobby" we can tell them there was an article on the subject, here's the feedback column, knock yourself out. :o)
That's my thought too ... the other half of this discussion is the way the hobby population is shrinking because Model Railroader's circulation has tanked. That's the editorial in issue 3.
With those two topics out of the way, we'll be able to move on to other more interesting hobby topics.
Say what you might about the topic of hobby health - of all the articles in Issue 2, more readers read this editorial comment thread than any other comment thread on any other article in the magazine.
So somebody cares ...
Joe Fugate
Publisher, Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine
Say what you might about the topic of hobby health - of all the articles in Issue 2, more readers read this editorial comment thread than any other comment thread on any other article in the magazine.
So somebody cares ...
Somehow that doesn't surprise me. It's like that human morbid curiosity thing, where we are horrified by what we see but we can't help looking...go figure.
Joe, in a related thread you mentioned that you were surprised by the lack of discussion on some subjects, and how you thought there might be more. Here, you note that this one has had high readership.
Say what you might about the topic of hobby health - of all the articles in Issue 2, more readers read this editorial comment thread than any other comment thread on any other article in the magazine.
I would like to input that for myself, I haven't anything that I think is of value to add to the articles that were published. I'm against the useless "looks great" post; the articles are good, if they weren't I wouldn't be reading them in the first place.
In part that's because of a total lack of experience in the hobby, so for the moment I'm trying to learn more than teach.
I wonder why I replied to this one at such a late date; I think it's because it was bumped up to the top of the "What's new" chain and drew my interest today enough to finally post my thoughts, no doubt in part due to the communality of these threads on other forums.
As I mentioned, the irony of my post was not lost on me!
I would like to input that for myself, I haven't anything that I think is of value to add to the articles that were published. I'm against the useless "looks great" post; the articles are good, if they weren't I wouldn't be reading them in the first place.
I have to second that. In most cases I have been very impressed with the articles in the magazines and while I have no issues with posting to say, "well done", I haven't had much to add. I hope nobody gets the idea their article is not appreciated because of a lack of feedback. I think being able to say ones piece about an article and actually get a response from the author is simply awesome!
I do like to drop in and give a "looks great" (or "looks like bantha pudu", depending on how I feel..) when someone posts something about their layout just as a way of saying "Hey, someone is looking at your work". I guess its like a dollar in a g-string except its not worth a dollar. Maybe like a note in the g-string that says "looks great" LOL.
Oh no, shut me off, I started talking about forums on the forum....
Hobbies don't die but they change. And when they change you get to see alot of editorial and other forms of literary handwringing.
In high school back in the mid 1960s (I escaped in 1966) I got involve in photography as a hobby. Back then it meant having access to a darkroom, an enlarger and working with chemicals and all sorts of other parapgernalia. I liked it but I did not like spending hours in the stuffy and hot darkroom trying come up wiht unusual and interesting photo effects to produce artsy prints. However all that began to change in the late 1980s as digital photography made dark rooms obsolete.
I am sure the photography magazines featured all sorts of handwrininging over th4e loss of the darkroom and the introduction of computer darkrooms. I am sure many of the companies that made dark room equipment and supplies panicked oer this development as well. But if you really stop to think about it, photography is still with us and one can still have photography as hobby. Sure it may cost more to get into today and there not be as many people who have this as their hobby, but there are alot more people taking photos of what they're created in their man hobby than there ever were who just had photography as their main hobby.
So things change. And approaches change. Photography is still here and by the same token model railroading in some form will always be with us.
Maybe there is still hope for the hobby. If you have attended or heard of the World's Greatest Hobby On Tour shows, they are rekindling interest in model railroads. I have attended them as a dealer since they started in 2004, and the public response has been very positive. I believe there will be one in Long beach, next year. About as close to Tucson as it will get, unless you want to drive/ fly to the one in Denver, the week after Long Beach.
Between local shows and this one, I am able to keep my 20 year hobby store alive.
It is really interesting to see the idea of instant gratification being mentioned as a problem. Maybe it's the case in other scales, but it seems to me in N-Scale, I read more and more articles about handlaying turnouts and track, scratch built structures and heavy engine modifications then I ever have in the past.
Joe - I am reading the 2nd issue over again because I could not get a fast enough connect in Belize. Anyway, I am logged in to the sites but cannot get any of the advertising targets to connect to their websites. Is that because of the old issue or am I doing something wrong?
For the last 3 hrs I have been going over the first 2 issues of MRH and have been clicking on the different supporters that advertise with us and have had no problem.
last week I had the same trouble your having with connecting to advertisers and I shut my computer off, waited a minute then turned the computer on again and had no more trouble. Many times when your having connection problems with the internet I have found if you reboot your computer (shut it off and then restart) it removes the problem so if your still not connecting to the MRH advertisers try rebooting your computer, 95% of the time this will fix your connection problems. I hope this helps you.
Comments
I don't think is dying
Howdy friends.... I want to share with you the press release in reference to the "Worl's Greatest Hobby on Tour" Show held in Philadelphia last January. I think it speaks by itself. "The World's Greatest Hobby on Tour was the inaugural event at the new Greater Philadelphia Expo Center on January 3 and 4, 2009. On Saturday 24,690 people attended the show and on Sunday 15,562 people visited the show for a weekend total of 40,152 people." "While the show was a raging success it did overwhelm the expo center and the surrounding infrastructure. While almost 25,000 people attended on Saturday, thousands more tried to attend but couldn't due to the massive traffic jam on the roads to the show. Local traffic radio reported over a 5 mile back up on the route to the show and patrons reported traffic delays in excess of 2 hours to exit the interstate." (You can read the complete text here: http://www.wghshow.com/pressreleases/WGH%20Press%20Release%2040152%20att...)
With all due respect to the Author...
With all due respect to Joe, whom has invested a fair amount of thought and time to produce a well written article, I have to admit that my personal response to these kind of question is a little more banal. Who cares?
When I see this topic espoused, I just can't wonder why.
Who cares if it survives or collapses in it's current or past form. Why does it matter? Does it matter to me?
If the entire hobby dies, what ever that means, does it mean that I won't be able to continue it? Of course not.
Does it mean that it would be harder to get things? Of course it would, but not impossible, and were the hobby industry (which I think is what a lot of this consideration is about, the industry around the hobby more than the hobby itself) to disappear overnight, I have learned enough, and have enough already, to be able to continue the hobby the way I would like to for the foreseeable future.
And that's what it's really about, you and your hobby. Hobbys are what they are to the individual. I don't think any hobby is bigger than the individual person who participates in it,
My hobby is not necessarily Joe's hobby, or for that matter anyone else's. I've moved and migrated from other hobbys, but those "activities" remain. Other people still find them of interest or discover them for the first time, however for what ever reason they simply don't interest me as they once did and they are no longer important enough to me to devote time to.
People's aspects of how they enjoy their hobby may overlap, but my experience so far indicates that no two people are exactly alike when it comes to how they enjoy their leisure (hobby) time. Some people, for instance may enjoy this type of discussion, but personally I'd rather spend my time elsewhere (I understand the irony of that statement as I type it).
Cheers!
LOL.. Yeah.. its amongst my
LOL..
Yeah.. its amongst my list of least favorite forum topics that I still find my self getting sucked into. Of course, at the top of my least favorite forum topics are topics about forums.
Chris
“If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.” My modest progress Blog
I have to agree...
The first time I saw this topic raised on another forum, I mistakenly thought it was a new discussion and was mildly interested! When I realized that the same topic gets beat to death about 4 times a year on that forum I lost any interest I might have had previously.
I enjoyed Joes editorial and I think it's great to have gotten the subject out there and out of the way. Now when anyone want's to discuss the "state of the hobby" we can tell them there was an article on the subject, here's the feedback column, knock yourself out. :o)
BlueHillsCPR said: ... I
That's my thought too ... the other half of this discussion is the way the hobby population is shrinking because Model Railroader's circulation has tanked. That's the editorial in issue 3.
With those two topics out of the way, we'll be able to move on to other more interesting hobby topics.
Say what you might about the topic of hobby health - of all the articles in Issue 2, more readers read this editorial comment thread than any other comment thread on any other article in the magazine.
So somebody cares ...
Joe Fugate
Publisher, Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine
Read my blog
It figures!
Somehow that doesn't surprise me. It's like that human morbid curiosity thing, where we are horrified by what we see but we can't help looking...go figure.
In a related thread
Joe, in a related thread you mentioned that you were surprised by the lack of discussion on some subjects, and how you thought there might be more. Here, you note that this one has had high readership.
I would like to input that for myself, I haven't anything that I think is of value to add to the articles that were published. I'm against the useless "looks great" post; the articles are good, if they weren't I wouldn't be reading them in the first place.
In part that's because of a total lack of experience in the hobby, so for the moment I'm trying to learn more than teach.
I wonder why I replied to this one at such a late date; I think it's because it was bumped up to the top of the "What's new" chain and drew my interest today enough to finally post my thoughts, no doubt in part due to the communality of these threads on other forums.
As I mentioned, the irony of my post was not lost on me!
Cheers
That's it exactly!
I have to second that. In most cases I have been very impressed with the articles in the magazines and while I have no issues with posting to say, "well done", I haven't had much to add. I hope nobody gets the idea their article is not appreciated because of a lack of feedback. I think being able to say ones piece about an article and actually get a response from the author is simply awesome!
I do like to drop in and give
I do like to drop in and give a "looks great" (or "looks like bantha pudu", depending on how I feel..) when someone posts something about their layout just as a way of saying "Hey, someone is looking at your work". I guess its like a dollar in a g-string except its not worth a dollar. Maybe like a note in the g-string that says "looks great" LOL.
Oh no, shut me off, I started talking about forums on the forum....
Chris
“If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.” My modest progress Blog
The death of model railroading is greatly exagerated!
Hobbies don't die but they change. And when they change you get to see alot of editorial and other forms of literary handwringing.
In high school back in the mid 1960s (I escaped in 1966) I got involve in photography as a hobby. Back then it meant having access to a darkroom, an enlarger and working with chemicals and all sorts of other parapgernalia. I liked it but I did not like spending hours in the stuffy and hot darkroom trying come up wiht unusual and interesting photo effects to produce artsy prints. However all that began to change in the late 1980s as digital photography made dark rooms obsolete.
I am sure the photography magazines featured all sorts of handwrininging over th4e loss of the darkroom and the introduction of computer darkrooms. I am sure many of the companies that made dark room equipment and supplies panicked oer this development as well. But if you really stop to think about it, photography is still with us and one can still have photography as hobby. Sure it may cost more to get into today and there not be as many people who have this as their hobby, but there are alot more people taking photos of what they're created in their man hobby than there ever were who just had photography as their main hobby.
So things change. And approaches change. Photography is still here and by the same token model railroading in some form will always be with us.
Irv
Right on, Irv. Here's a link
Right on, Irv.
Here's a link to my Response piece, for posterity sakes:
The Passage of our Hobby through Time:
http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/1134
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Benny's Index or Somewhere Chasing Rabbits
RR Hobby
Maybe there is still hope for the hobby. If you have attended or heard of the World's Greatest Hobby On Tour shows, they are rekindling interest in model railroads. I have attended them as a dealer since they started in 2004, and the public response has been very positive. I believe there will be one in Long beach, next year. About as close to Tucson as it will get, unless you want to drive/ fly to the one in Denver, the week after Long Beach.
Between local shows and this one, I am able to keep my 20 year hobby store alive.
Instant gratification...
It is really interesting to see the idea of instant gratification being mentioned as a problem. Maybe it's the case in other scales, but it seems to me in N-Scale, I read more and more articles about handlaying turnouts and track, scratch built structures and heavy engine modifications then I ever have in the past.
The advertising targets
Joe - I am reading the 2nd issue over again because I could not get a fast enough connect in Belize. Anyway, I am logged in to the sites but cannot get any of the advertising targets to connect to their websites. Is that because of the old issue or am I doing something wrong?
Cheers, Jake Holshuh
sipapu9@hotmail.com
Cheers, Jake
Try again later ...
Jake:
Try again later, or try a different computer if you can. That will narrow down if it's on your end or our end.
Joe Fugate
Publisher, Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine
Read my blog
For the last 3 hrs I have
For the last 3 hrs I have been going over the first 2 issues of MRH and have been clicking on the different supporters that advertise with us and have had no problem.
last week I had the same trouble your having with connecting to advertisers and I shut my computer off, waited a minute then turned the computer on again and had no more trouble. Many times when your having connection problems with the internet I have found if you reboot your computer (shut it off and then restart) it removes the problem so if your still not connecting to the MRH advertisers try rebooting your computer, 95% of the time this will fix your connection problems. I hope this helps you.
Dan
Rio Grande Dan