Why is the younger generation not getting-into Irish railway modeling?

[Midland Man]

Hello all 

The reason I wanted to ask this question is because I find now that people find the hobby weird.They only think of Thomas the tank or Flying scotsman which makes the hobby look bad in a way.I also find that modeling modern railways is a little boring for a young child.As one of the younger members of this forum my interest in model railways is the MGWR 1920s to the 1950s .The reason being is books like rail to Achill and Ernie Shepards Midland great western railway were the  two books that were available to me as my grandad had a interest in local history and of the railways. Hope you all like.

Edited March 31, 2020 by Midland Man

[Warbonnet]

If it wasnt for Thomas the Tank Engine I probably would've never gone near the hobby if I'm honest. It's a great gateway for many children to play with trains and be introduced to them. How is that or a famous loco like Flying Scotsman a bad thing if it raises the profile of the hobby?

[popeye]

I think it helps if you grew up near a railway line and then model that era as it is what you grew up with.

That's what happened with me.

But i do model irish trains that i have never seen in my life. and that is because i have seen them in

books, DVD's and internet.

[Midland Man]

22 minutes ago, Warbonnet said:

If it wasnt for Thomas the Tank Engine I probably would've never gone near the hobby if I'm honest. It's a great gateway for many children to play with trains and be introduced to them. How is that or a famous loco like Flying Scotsman a bad thing if it raises the profile of the hobby?

I phased it wrong I meant the animated show not the classic tv show or the books 

[NIRCLASS80]

For some reason it’s seen as a bit of a weird hobby by many in Ireland. Yet after moving to England I found work colleagues and friends far more interested and certainly no longer viewed as the train weirdo!

[minister_for_hardship]

It's an Irish thing, anything other than mainstream culture, GAA and chronic alcohol consumption is looked upon as weird.

[PorkyP]

I agree with popeye, we used to play on the railway tracks as kids and climb about on wagons etc, great fun!..I don't suppose in todays safety culture this happens much nowadays...

[BosKonay]

When I was a kid playing on the line was our playground, putting your ear on the rails to see if you could hear the train coming (usually while some smart arse shoved you pretending to be a train) even today it’s that era of rolling stock and coach / loco that used roll past us I’m most interested in. However I only started collecting and Modelling when my first child was born and I was subjected to two hours a day of Thomas the tank engine. So there is a place for all
 

 

[jhb171achill]

For me, it was early-age indoctrination due to family on both sides. Both grandfather and father started life on the GSR, the latter moving to the LMS in England, then NCC, then GNR and ending up with the UTA. (No doubt they stencilled "U T" on him somewhere....!). My mother worked in GNR dining cars and then the GNR's Bundoran hotel...... other relatives emigrated and worked for railway administrations in the Gold Coast, as it was called, South Africa and Argentina! And closer to home, the timetabling department of the Dublin United Tramways Co........

So I hadn't a hope of doing anything else as a hobby!

Edited April 1, 2020 by jhb171achill

[DART8118]

If you have visited Warley you would know that you would get run over at opening time by youngsters trying to be first to get to the Thomas Tank layout.  I think they have 4 controllers on the layout which they give to the children to run the trains.  That’s what attracts young people, being able to play with something that’s part of their world.  You don’t see too many of them looking at prize winning layouts with perfectly modelled couplings, rivets, landscape, or shades of paint.  Those are things that are of interest to serious modellers, perfectionists and oldtimers, not youngsters.  But if you had Polar Express, Frozen, My Little Pony, The Railway Children, or Harry Potter you might get killed in the rush.  I think that’s where a start is needed – the things youngsters are familiar with - and once the joy of model trains is experienced those youngsters will come back to the hobby in later life and will want something Irish closer to home.

My tuppence worth.

8118

[leslie10646]

Ah, JHB, I only found out that a family member had worked on the railways when I looked up the enlistment papers of my Great Uncle, who died of wounds the day after the great Canadian attack on Vimy Ridge in April 1917.

"Previous employment" was listed as locomotive fireman! I haven't managed to find out which railway, or for how long - he was forty years old and, of course, a volunteer with an Ontario regiment - so there would have been other jobs before that.

Gabriel was probably born at "The Cavan" the name of the townland where the family cottage stood and from which I saw my first trains. My grandfather was stationed at the top of the lane from which you could see Richhill station - when a train set off towards Portadown - there would be a loud shout and the "little boy" would be brought out and held aloft to behold the Great Northern at work!

[Buz]

Hi all

If my experience at trying Irish trains is anything to go on here are some reasons I think Irish rail may not be of interest to the young.

More young than we think are building or helping to build model railways just not Irish ones.

Perhaps Irish Railways would best be classed as a special interest modelling group.

Lack of reliable supply for the common as muck stuff, limited and short runs of ready to run stock, and no starter sets.

I have a bit of a passenger train and can't complete it I can't get a Cravens snack bar or standard class coach surely a nice complete four coach train is not to much to ask for given its a train set sized train, but obviously it is .

I have one goods wagon and every time I find out about new stuff that interests or might interest me its gone before I even get a look in, and evil bay prices are pure evil and so far over the top it's a very bad joke and the money goes back in wallet and some how ends up back in the domestic budget.

I am on the verge of giving up and I am not a young one this is in-spite of finding a suitable single line station plan to build a freelance impression of Ireland.

Bachmann's  Carlow ( spelling) station weighs too much for Postage ?? or is that just me.

With all this agro it is just so much easier to build a nice USA or UK or even local Aus railway ( you really won't like the prices of the Aus outline trains) which is why Nimby a SAR au station never got anywhere close to starting but I do have a complete goods train that I put together for it.

regards John

[Broithe]

Another aspect may be that Irish railways never really had a 'glamorous age', as most others did. It's always been a utilitarian transport provider.

The lack of items available isn't always a bad thing, it does limit the expenditure, in fact...

To some extent, the amount of Irish stuff appearing these days is becoming a problem to keep up with.

With a current exposure to about one thousandth of the world's population, it is likely to remain a niche market.

But, compared to the position just twenty short years ago, the leap into the future has been prodigious.

[DJ Dangerous]

5 hours ago, Buz said:

Hi all

If my experience at trying Irish trains is anything to go on here are some reasons I think Irish rail may not be of interest to the young.

More young than we think are building or helping to build model railways just not Irish ones.

Perhaps Irish Railways would best be classed as a special interest modelling group.

Lack of reliable supply for the common as muck stuff, limited and short runs of ready to run stock, and no starter sets.

I have a bit of a passenger train and can't complete it I can't get a Cravens snack bar or standard class coach surely a nice complete four coach train is not to much to ask for given its a train set sized train, but obviously it is .

I have one goods wagon and every time I find out about new stuff that interests or might interest me its gone before I even get a look in, and evil bay prices are pure evil and so far over the top it's a very bad joke and the money goes back in wallet and some how ends up back in the domestic budget.

I am on the verge of giving up and I am not a young one this is in-spite of finding a suitable single line station plan to build a freelance impression of Ireland.

Bachmann's  Carlow ( spelling) station weighs too much for Postage ?? or is that just me.

With all this agro it is just so much easier to build a nice USA or UK or even local Aus railway ( you really won't like the prices of the Aus outline trains) which is why Nimby a SAR au station never got anywhere close to starting but I do have a complete goods train that I put together for it.

regards John

This is something that has occurred to me lately. I'd like to be able to model Irish Rail as things are today.

I have some wonderful Spoil Wagons and Tara Mines wagons, but no passenger stock at all, no 22000's, no CAF Mk4's, no Enterprise coaches, nothing.

On top of that, sourcing locos to haul them was very difficult. No 071's available, and the 201's were hard to find and cost above average.

I'm not going to give up, and will probably settle for some BR Mk4 repaints with no DVT, along with some 071 repaints in pre-2015 condition, but deep down, that won't truly satisfy me.

[jhb171achill]

“Thomas” has been mentioned above.

The late Rev. Awdry must be owed great gratitude for getting a lot of “young’uns” interested. I know at least one indispensable volunteer on the 12 inches to 1 ft scale who cut his railway teeth (probably literally!) on “Thomas” toys.

[Broithe]

11 hours ago, jhb171achill said:

“Thomas” has been mentioned above.

The late Rev. Awdry must be owed great gratitude for getting a lot of “young’uns” interested. I know at least one indispensable volunteer on the 12 inches to 1 ft scale who cut his railway teeth (probably literally!) on “Thomas” toys.

His reverence was not a fan of the newer presentations of the Thomas genre, suggesting that they sometimes showed "lamentable gross ignorance about railway practices".

[jhb171achill]

2 hours ago, Broithe said:

His reverence was not a fan of the newer presentations of the Thomas genre, suggesting that they sometimes showed "lamentable gross ignorance about railway practices".

I could well believe it! Having been brought up on the originals, which I still have somewhere covered in my childish scribblings, I concur with His Reverence!

[jhb171achill]

20 hours ago, Buz said:

Hi all

If my experience at trying Irish trains is anything to go on here are some reasons I think Irish rail may not be of interest to the young.

More young than we think are building or helping to build model railways just not Irish ones.

Perhaps Irish Railways would best be classed as a special interest modelling group.

Lack of reliable supply for the common as muck stuff, limited and short runs of ready to run stock, and no starter sets.

I have a bit of a passenger train and can't complete it I can't get a Cravens snack bar or standard class coach surely a nice complete four coach train is not to much to ask for given its a train set sized train, but obviously it is .

I have one goods wagon and every time I find out about new stuff that interests or might interest me its gone before I even get a look in, and evil bay prices are pure evil and so far over the top it's a very bad joke and the money goes back in wallet and some how ends up back in the domestic budget.

I am on the verge of giving up and I am not a young one this is in-spite of finding a suitable single line station plan to build a freelance impression of Ireland.

Bachmann's  Carlow ( spelling) station weighs too much for Postage ?? or is that just me.

With all this agro it is just so much easier to build a nice USA or UK or even local Aus railway ( you really won't like the prices of the Aus outline trains) which is why Nimby a SAR au station never got anywhere close to starting but I do have a complete goods train that I put together for it.

regards John

Interesting take on it, Buz, and I suspect you're not alone. The reality is that ANY niche interest - and railways are one - will carry a price tag; the meter's running!

Much as I'm on record here for extolling the virtues of times long past, and having little interest and less knowledge in anything after 1980, it has to be accepted that something like a cheap ready to run ICR (I know, I know) is what young potential enthusiasts SEE when Favourite Uncle takes them for their first trip ever on a "REAL" train. My earliest memory was a first class compartment in a musty old wooden bogie behind the GNR's no. 207 "Boyne", and seeing the vastnesses of the old ("proper"!) Portadown station, not the shamefully ugly concrete bunker heap that's there today. But to be fair, I realise that this is utterly irrelevant to, let's say, a 13-year-old who is now getting interested, and whether we all like it or not, is the future of the hobby. For him (or her?) it's an ICR, yellow machines or a Mk 4 or "Enterprise" set. 

There's nothing much else operating on almost all railways now; NIR CAFs are an even smaller market.

But to GET the youngster in - maybe a generic round-ended cheap railcar which comes in ICR livery or NIR livery. Once smitten by THESE, they can be gently introduced to the goodies of our well-known manufacturers.

MY first "layout" was a circle of super-4 track (or whatever it was called), a Hornby "Polly" 0.4.0, two wagons and a guard's van. Gawd knows what I did with them over the years - think I gave them away............my point being that at THAT time, no "serious" modeller would have given such items a second look.....

[Buz]

Hi jhb171achill

I would not call trains as such a niche interest but then again today they might be, but back when I started most of my childhood friends had a train set of one brand or another and of various sizes.

I like you am also  a "proper" with a guards van freight train person my start set was a diesel version of the pick up goods with a blue diesel shunter it went the way first train sets in the hand of a very young child go shame that the loco was a set only one and a complete set collector price would probably get me two more Irish locomotives at top prices.

I still have a Nellie from back then that I must get re wheeled one day it still works and it makes a good shunter or private industrial having all that weight and is reasonably controllable.

An older style three car rail-car set that could be produced cheaply  and be painted its correct livery and just about get away with being painted in other Irish rail liveries would be ideal if such a thing is possible to get maximum use of the tooling Triang and Hornby's trick.

I would even buy one just to get a visually complete but not too out of place passenger train running.

regards John

 

 

[Buz]

On 4/1/2020 at 6:23 PM, jhb171achill said:

For me, it was early-age indoctrination due to family on both sides. Both grandfather and father started life on the GSR, the latter moving to the LMS in England, then NCC, then GNR and ending up with the UTA. (No doubt they stencilled "U T" on him somewhere....!). My mother worked in GNR dining cars and then the GNR's Bundoran hotel...... other relatives emigrated and worked for railway administrations in the Gold Coast, as it was called, South Africa and Argentina! And closer to home, the timetabling department of the Dublin United Tramways Co........

So I hadn't a hope of doing anything else as a hobby!

I never had a hope either

Dad worked for the Tube later  BR then we moved to Aus because had had got a job with the WAGR  one of the uncles also worked on the Tube I later worked for the WAGR and OH Dear! first proper train set at 4yo

Some how I missed the stopped playing trains part of the story when girls and cars became much more interesting I was lucky the girl worked out the train thing was a good thing as she always knew where I was when I was not about.

So the only thing that has changed is the shape and color of the trains over the years.

regards John