[forgive me, but I just got to do it]
( using his very best Richard Dawson impersonation )
And The Survey Says?
Preamble:
The recent survey that I posted on LSC was to try and help me get a better idea of what the active people on the board do with their railroading time and energy. Trying to make the Mik challenges as desirable to as many as possible and reach out to a diverse grope of modelers. Prior to this survey I ( and the rest of you all ) could only guess as to what each of the others preferences were, and what we ran, and liked to run the most. I had an idea of what the survey would come up with, and wasn’t too far off, but there was a couple of hidden surprises in the final data.
I swear some of you get up in the mornings and set out to make my day just a little bit rougher around the edges ( remember guys, I had a heart attack just a couple of months ago). I thought that giving you 5 simple questions, with multiple choices on most of them would make it easier on me………well I guess I didn’t plan the questions out well, because on a lot of the answers I got multiple answers. Like time period: [A] Steam 1930’s Diesels 1950’s thru 1980’s. Now come on guys, that doesn’t fit into a neat little check box for an answer. So for you data freaks, I gave answers like that multiple data points on both TIME and MOTIVE.
On multiple answers to the question I entered multiple data points. And on other questions where I had no idea as to the answer, I gave no data or created an answer of [OTHER]. Some questions went un-answered. I excluded all answers to the “Other” scales ( HO, On30, N ) SO, there is variable data sets to extrapolate from. Without further ado here is what i learned.
1. What SCALE do you model in?
Large scale or “G” scale modeling is generally excepted as using 45mm gage track, and the scales become diverse from using it to represent different gages. I was ready to understand the large diversity from our group, what came as a surprise was that a lot of people run multiple scales on their layout. I had 60 data points (replies) to work from.
1:20.3 1:22.5 1:24 1:29 1:32 7/8
(21) (12) (11) (13) (2) (1)
35% 20% 18.3% 21.6% 3.3% 1.6%
1:20.3 Led the pack in total numbers, but the 1:22.5 and 1:24 totaled as to be the preferred. I believe this is because of the wide usage of inexpensive Bachmann products and the ease of using 1/2 scale to the inch for modeling structures and etc. The 1:29 and 1:32 scales were dominated by those that ran Diesels. This is mainly due to the prototype lack of narrow gage diesels out in the world. I believe that the 1:20.3 crowd is made up by the dominating number of those that “scratch build” for the fine scale world. The larger physical size scales ( 1:20.3 and 1:22.5/24) make up for 73.3% of all our modeling. The 7/8 scale guys ( as they already know) is a very fringe group, and primary because of the lack of “Ready to Run” equipment.
2. What TIME PERIOD?
No real surprises here, I was expecting the “steam era” to be the big factor and was correct. I consolidated some decades together as “era’s”.
I had 60 data points (replies) to work from.
< 1900 00-20’s 30’s 40’s 50-70’s 80’s -> Other
(7) (9) (14) (12) (9) (4) (5)
11.6% 15% 23.3% 20% 15% 6.6% 8.3%
The Golden age of steam 1900-1940’s dominated the time frame with 58.3% of our modeling, if you add in pre 1900 it jumped to 70%. We love our steam, and the wide availability of RTR ( Ready To Run) steam models pushes us into this era. The Diesel era of 50’s on comes into the correlation with the “scale” numbers at 21.6% of era’s. Again I believe its the available models in the RTR category that drives the time period we chose to model. There were a number of users that run both Steam and Diesels on their layouts representing two time periods.
3. What MOTIVE POWER do you run?
Again no real surprises here. The number of Steam and Diesel users that ran both types pushed the responses to 64 data points (replies) to work from.
Steam Power Diesel Power Elect. (overhead cat.)
(37) (24) (3)
57.8% 37.5% 4.6%
The numbers confirms the “Steam Era” in the Time question at 57.8%, and parallels the Diesel data at 37.5% being higher from people running both on their RR. Most responses that were a “Both” were along the lines of I run Steam and have a Diesel too.
4. Where is your pike?
This came as no surprise also. Do the the overwhelming preference for the larger size scales, it almost mandates that we put the Garden in “Garden Railroading” The “Both” category was kept as a separate data set and not counted into either Outdoor or Indoor categories. We had only 44 data points (replies).
Outdoor Indoor Both None
(29) (7) (6) (2)
65.9% 15.9% 13.6% 4.5%
Adding in the responses for the “Both” to the data sets gets us to 50 total responses and (35) for Outdoor at a 70%, (13) for Indoor at a 26% and 4% for None. There was no differentiation as too “On the Ground” or “Raised” thou several replied to the type of roadbed used.
5. Do you SCRATCH-BUILD?
Big surprise here for me…. I added the category here for “Kit-bash” after several responded that way. LSC’ers are a really creative group.
I had 51 replies here.
YES NO KIT-BASH
(41) (6) (4)
80.3% 11.7% 7.8%
If we add the “Kit-bashers” into the Scratch Builders column ( I think that they really do fit there ) we have an even larger number of creators, (45) @ 88.2%.
Some totals don’t add up due to rounding and not all figures parallel due to multiple answers to the same question, and some questions were skipped (no response) by respondents.
My big take away is the number of scratch builders there are within our LSC community. 88.2% WOW!! I am a little surprised that the Mik Challenges don’t reflect that level of builders. The diversity of scales, time era’s and motive power combinations makes us a “All Over The Place” group, that no pigeon hole would accommodate.
) is crucial. Right now, I have three or four different projects going on at the same time. But with health issues at 77, having a tendency to disrupt “hobby work”, Life gets in the way.
