My HO model railway hobby career was multi-leveled: 36 feet by 12 feet and about an inch deep.
The purchase of our first PC circa 1988 killed my modelling career - with the rails being lifted about a decade later.
With a PC ($900 colour monitor, extra - bought just to distinguish between the coloured brake gauge needles in the otherwise monochrome program) I could run the Simmons-Boardman's train simulator to learn about train dynamics on the Heron Bay and Nipigon Subs with road profile data extracted from topographic maps. With my father's work to extract data from paper periodicals, I could use the PC to produce and print out indexes to help us find articles on particular subjects.
... I could build huge databases of information distilled from employee timetables for various periods ... This was probably not the most profitable/enjoyable use of my time.
However, I have always been around HO model railways.
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| 1958: Pikes you can model in a basement apartment. LC Gagnon was a careful, precise modeller. Cataraqui Northern Railway was displayed on carefully-printed letterboards. Railcar draft gear featured miniature fence-style staples inserted into wooden centre sills of the cardboard cars, with tiny wire hooks fitted to the staple on one end. (Reverse movements, particularly over switches, were generally prohibited.) A Mikado (CNR), Pacific (CPR) and an 0-4-0 handled some duties. |
Context for future readers: Until 145% tariffs were applied to Chinese imports to the US, I had not been following the hobby closely in recent decades ...
This week I have watched numerous YouTube videos made by individual 'brand owners' or 'brand managers' which custom-order and import model rolling stock into the US for retail sale. These are pleading for a 'carve out' for their companies which have neither the cash flow to pay tariffs on 1 TEU worth of locomotives on the dock ... nor the profit margins to stay in business with these tariffs. (And proper carve outs cost money ... for lobbying and campaign contributions ... wink, wink.)
These small companies cannot hold out until America's mighty model railroad 'motive power shops' return to their industrial glory of the 1950s and 1960s.
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... As a former Canadian modeler, I would add that one bit of financial nonsense which American modellers never had to put up with ... was the currency conversion and price creativeness which occurred as US-built model rolling stock was sent across the border into Canada.
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The organized period of model railroading in the United States began on 15 December 1933 when Al Kalmbach and his company published the first edition of Model Railroader. Beginning in the same city, were both William K Walthers Inc (1932) ... and the National Model Railroad Association (1935).
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1935
Note: In this post, several examples from the same publication will follow the year subtitle.
The first MR's were little more than a pamphlet.
My copy below has fewer than 25 pages - including plenty of advertisements.
Notice the CPR motive power depicted in red under the masthead.
One US Dollar of 1935 equals USD 23.34 in 2025.
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1952
from: Practical Guide to Model Railroading; Ed: Westcott & Wagner; 1952 ... 1976; Kalmbach.
Each one of us who has had a model railway has found that our abilities and interests support particular activities over others.
For example, people who are interested in electronics are often drawn to develop this aspect of their layouts ... Bruce Walthers' father was an electrical engineer who began his model railway development by drilling holes in the tops of his Lionel model locomotives and installing large black rheostats so he could individually control their speed.
Malcolm Furlow was a famous, gifted neophyte to the hobby circa 1980 whose artistic talents produced spectacular results. However, he either burned out, and/or decided that he wanted exciting new challenges to further develop his personal portfolio of artistic achievement.
* * *
In Practical Guide (1952) you can see both realistic and unrealistic features in this scene. The steam engine's electrical pickups are designed to contact those trackside rails - a lot of extra work to enjoy the hobby and dispense with the third centre rail. The Un-Instagramable crumpled backdrop may have been placed to quickly execute the photo.
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1959
from: Model Railroader; December 1959; Kalmbach.
For skilled machinists believing in the 'Make it perfect - or don't make it!' credo, the tools had long existed before this advertisement.
To the ambitious modeller: Your aspirations to build that beautiful rough-finished frame can be made possible by buying our Unimat.
One US Dollar in 1959 equals USD 11.00 in 2025.
This Atlas snap track switch from 1959 is identical to those I bought by the dozen in the mid-1980s. I was certainly NOT an NMRA 'merit-badge' collector who laid my own track or desired to someday achieve the designation of 'master car builder'!
Cheap (exploitable) foreign labour or 'expensive' domestic labour? Labour is one aspect of manufacturing which is often used as a scapegoat for the flight of domestic manufacturing from the US and Canada.
A reacting comment to one of the model company YouTube China-tariff-pleading videos helpfully asked if the skills necessary for model railway equipment assembly could be taught in America to 'convicts and students'. Certainly, a more sophisticated capitalist would have included 'children under 12 with tiny nimble fingers'.
Actually, the failure to employ engineers to constantly improve manufactured products ... and the failure to adopt more modern manufacturing technology are faults which sit squarely at the feet of corporate management.
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Continuing in 1959: Offshore foreign manufacturers were starting to offer high-quality models for those not interested in crafting their own.
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Below: More products from 1959.
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1971
from: Electrical Handbook for Model Railroads, Vol 1; Paul Mallery; 1955 Simmons-Boardman, 1971 Model Craftsman.
I suspect that this neighbourhood-streetlight-dimmer was designed to power a large O gauge layout.
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Here is a really nice layout which was perhaps photographed in the 1960s. You can see a beautiful dispatching board, guard rails on the bridges and curves, and to top off this tour de force ... an Atlas snap track switch in the foreground.
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1975
from: The Model Railroading Handbook; Robert Schleicher; 1975; Chilton.
I believe my father built his HO Pacific and Mikado (mentioned at the top) from kits like this.
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1986
from: Model Railroader, article by Bruce Chubb; April 1986; Kalmbach.
This was a pioneering protocol for 'simplifying' wiring and automating model railway layouts. This system still exists for sale in 2025, although I believe that these beautiful racks are replaced by tiny printed circuit boards. Bruce Chubb's profession is confirmed in the next image. I was always quite inspired by the operating side of Bruce Chubb's large layout as depicted in MR.
In a 2022 YouTube video about his model railway he points out that real dispatcher panels from the two major manufacturers are used to dispatch on his layout. In 2022, there was the hope that his layout (deliberately designed in modules) in Grand Rapids, Michigan could be reassembled at a purpose-built museum.
* * *
From: Model Railroading, the Next 50 Years
Model Railroader; January 1984; Kalmbach.
At the Model Railroader 50th Anniversary Conference these panelists shared their views about the future of model railroading in three forum presentations which were followed with question and answer sessions.
Among their observations and predictions were these ideas ...
- The population is aging.
- The birth rate will remain low.
- 23% of general population have hobbies.
- Computers are changing the way business operates.
- This hobby will go on and on.
- Some hobbyists will continue to want to follow the pattern of becoming small manufacturers.
- The number of teenaged model railroaders is going down.
- Eventually the print form of Model Railroader will be replaced with an electronic version.
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| ... from the article ... |
- It will continue to be difficult for a younger model railroader to get into the hobby.
- Space for layouts in people's homes will decrease with smaller homes and condos, but incomes will rise (both parents working).
- Modern synthetic materials will replace the traditional wood and plaster.
- Portable control systems (a few thousand dollars) will allow you to follow your trains around.
- The prototype will be longer trains, less switching and 100-ton cars on branchlines.
- Models will become tiny - viewed with magnification - but with amplified sound.
- Compulsive scratchbuilders will always exist.
- A model railway is a substitute for being able to watch trains - we schedule trains to watch.
- And watching a model is better than watching a videotape.
- The advent of home computers will herald more modellers with skills in electronics.
- New technologies will enable us to increase the functionality of complex circuits.
- Electronic technologies must be upgradeable.
- All aspects of operation can be automated - leaving people free to just watch their layouts.
- Cars can have readable bar codes, switch lists can be computer generated.
- Computers can help us operate in a more realistic way.
... It would have been beyond their ability to foresee these developments ... but none of the panelists predicted that all rolling stock manufacturing would be outsourced to China by North American middlemen.
That each piece would have to be pre-ordered by the hobbyists and would be customized to reflect the exact characteristics of its road-numbered prototype ...
Make it perfect - or don't make it.
None foresaw that it would be highly-skilled Chinese engineers who would design the production processes ... That highly-automated machines would be used for production ... With final additional details added by intensive, cheap, semi-skilled labour.
And none predicted that Kalmbach would fold after selling most of its publications to 'the category king in the affluent enthusiast community'.
Most of Kalmbach's publications were sold to ...
Craig Fuller, CEO of Firecrown Media wrote the following article ...
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A comment was made in response to that Craig Fuller article by Dave Queener of Cumberland Model Engineering. To me, it summarizes model railroading's journey through time from that 1935 Model Railroader to the present 'crisis'. The two Firecrown links above will likely disappear. I am happy to let these links die because they are symptomatic of the failure of much of 'domestic' corporate manufacturing.
However, I want to ensure that Dave Queener's analysis and ideas about the essence of railway modelling are preserved. For that reason I have reproduced his comment here in its entirety.
Dave Queener's comment:
"The model train hobby’s history has been a reflection of American consumer product manufacturing since WW2. Pioneers in mass-produced model trains, particularly Athearn and Model Die Casting, were the pet projects of their founders, usually tool and die men, who rode the Post War wave of prosperity and piggybacked their hobby businesses on other consumer product lines. The genius of Uncle Irv Athearn, for instance, was creating a mass-produced product that a school boy could afford with his paper route money or allowance: the $1.98 screw-together kit in a box. The second and third generation which inherited Athearn and other similar hobby companies did not have the same passion as the founders, and spun them off to giant hobby importers such as Horizon. In short order the tooling was shipped from southern California to China. And that was the end of those California based manufacturing jobs. The so-called City of Industry became a shell of its former self, and the ubiquitous blue boxes are long gone.
As the author points out, nearly the entirety of the model train industry in its mass produced form is outsourced to China. Most of the rest of the hobby are garage-based businesses, and that is probably the majority, but they depend upon the mass production importers. For better or for worse, these are the checkbook manufacturers upon which the hobby now depends.
The history of outsourcing ready-to-run trains has itself been spotty. Lionel learned decades ago about the folly of outsourcing production to Mexico when their tooling was smashed in a labor dispute. The lion’s share of the check book manufacturers lost their tooling as well with the Sandicon (sp?) debacle in China, only to find Kader eventually acquiring the assets of Sandicon. And the checkbook men got left holding the bag. No tooling and no product.
So if one were to place blame for this sad state of affairs, fingers could readily be pointed at NAFTA, “most favored nation status” for the crony capitalist regimes, the corporatization of the hobby, the labor-of-love nature of most hobby businesses, and changing demographics. The days of paper routes are gone, and so are the entry level blue boxes. And not many 15 year-olds can afford $250-350 for their next plastic diesel after spending the week working part-time at Chick-fil-A. They’d rather spend their paycheck on something electronic.
Would that another genius like Irv Athearn might rise up. And that some of us grown-ups might put our capital towards domestic manufacturing, OSHA and the Feds be damned. A country that does not own its own manufacturing base is a country headed for the dustbin of history.
And yes, I am invested in the hobby industry, one of those garage-based manufacturers making craftsman kits . . . because I still love model trains."
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