Ray Dunakin said:
Boomer K MOGWAI said:
The point remains, why is GR floundering where others succeed?
I think a lot of it boils down to the recession and the changes in the hobby that occurred either as a result of the recession, or coincidental to it. The magazine used to carry multipage ads for several major dealers that went belly-up when the economy tanked. It also used to have ads for major manufacturers that no longer exist. The hobby and the magazine both took a big hit when LGB and Aristocraft went belly-up. Ads are primarily what pay for the magazine. Losing all those major advertisers, at the same time that many people were also forced out of the hobby and dropping their subscriptions, had to take a toll.
Agreed, plus consider that GR as a hobby was booming in the years before the recession. From the late 1990’s to 2006, there seemed to be an endless supply of affordable products coming from every manufacturer. The downturn started before the actual recession. IIRC first were the big price increases announced by China, prices for everything seemed to double in a short period of time, this was soon followed by the bankruptcy announcement of EPL LGB in 2006, the sudden loss of one of the biggest manufacturers in LS was a body blow to the hobby, then the recession hit in 2008. It was the depth of this recession that did the biggest blow, many long timers and newbies suddenly found themselves having to drop out the hobby as belt tightening or worse, job and home loss, dropped the floor out from under them. It felt like withing two years the scale seemed to loose about 2/3s of those that had been there before. Today even though the economy appears better, and many things like LGB appear to have resolved themselves to a point, and that we have new players like PIKO involved, that the still much higher prices have prevented alot of people from becoming involved again. This always was a niche hobby, but now its a rather pricey niche hobby and that is just a reality that I don’t think Kalmbach has yet really to adjust too.
Also I never got Marc’s aversion to certain things, things that really showed in the content. The focus on “bigger is better” and seemingly endless inclusion of huge yard size layouts sends the wrong message. If you ain’t got and acre and a half and a trust fund, this isn’t the hobby for you. I always liked the British magazine “Garden Rail” because it focused on small compact and very affordable and very approachable layouts. Something Marc always gave the vibe he was adverse too…too “cute”. Even when GR did “small layout” contests, the results were often quite laughable, the first contest winning layout, while nice, was literally larger than the footprint of my house! I even pointed that out, something which I am sure got me put on Marc’s shit list. So all I can say is that I hope the rag will continue, I hope the new editorship will actually look at whats going on in the hobby and focus on ways to help make it accessible and help grow the hobby in today’s economic reality.
