Why is Japanese N scale so hard to find in the US?

[EF57]

 

How pleasant it was to read Jeff’s cogent argument why this hobby is not dying in the US!  A positive prognosis is nowadays truly a vox clamantis in deserto!     Indeed, it always was a hobby for older men — older than me, at any rate (until recently).  We may ourselves all have been the odd youthful enthusiasts, and there will always be those, but as a minority compared with people who have the money and time.  The rooms were always full of grey hair.  As long as those guys keep on coming, things are OK.

[Cat]

One thing I've noticed at the Springfield Mass shows is that there are big age demographic differences by club types.

The S-scale modellers are aging out rapidly and their numbers are dwindling.

The N-Trak and HO layout crowds were largely middle-aged.

The T-Trak area however had quite a wide age spread of folks participating; and even a couple of kids regularly operating trains with the DCC walk-around controls.  They weren't even tall enough to see and enjoy the N-Trak layouts, never mind operate them!

That show has certainly grown over the past two decades that we've been attending every few years, filling up more and more buildings at Big E fairgrounds.  Attendance is rock solid — arriving on Saturday morning, it's best to have pre-paid tickets rather than losing so much time waiting in the ticket buying line.