Will the number of rail enthusiasts decline in the coming years?

[nw1]

I realise that this is a controversial subject, but I am wondering whether the number of active rail enthusiasts will decline in coming years.

The railway does seem to be in a (hopefully temporary) downward phase at the moment, with cuts driven by Government spending cuts the apparent root cause.

However there is much talk of things like the peak never coming back to the extent that it did, due to more home working (personally I think this is just conjecture, but we will see).

I can get enthusiastic about a wide range of rolling stock, including hauled stock and multiple units, so I'm not thinking about the actual stock itself. However, in the absence of obscure once-or-twice-a-day holiday specials and the like, it's arguably the peak that kept the recent, pre-Covid (let's say 2004-19) railway interesting. The existence of the peak means that stock allocations even in the Monday-Friday off-peak have been interestingly unpredictable - both the stock type and the train length - as many workings are designed to ensure the right stock is on the right train for the peak. For instance, from a rail enthusiast POV I welcomed SWT's decision to continue with two classes of unit, the 444 and 450, thus keeping the CIG/VEP spirit alive. (And I do miss the two separate liveries for these two classes. I think I'd have liked to have seen SWT continue...)

While no-one can predict the future, the trends, even before Covid, seemed to be towards a fixed-length-all-day railway with perhaps only one class of unit (Thameslink is a very good example). But this trend, at least, had the standard pattern augmented with peak extras. The post-Covid railway will presumably keep the fixed-length formations, but without the peak extras.

There are likely sound economic reasons for this, but it's not so good from a rail enthusiast POV, at least IMO. Thus, with a more predictable and less varied railway, will we see less rail enthusiasts in the coming years?

 

[duffman82]

There will still be charters & railtours as well as freight movements to entice enthusiasts. A lot of the younger generation will like these newer units compared to us older generation who prefer the classic stock.

 

[nw1]

There will still be charters & railtours as well as freight movements to entice enthusiasts. A lot of the younger generation will like these newer units compared to us older generation who prefer the classic stock.

Though it's not the stock that I'm talking about (even though I often hark back to the years of CIGs, VEPs and hauled XC trains). It's more the move towards predictability, for instance fixed-length formations all day, uniformity of stock (Thameslink, Greater Anglia - both of which have replaced units that were relatively new) and few or no peak extras.

The 2004-19 period didn't feature the classic stock but was still IMO interesting due to unpredictable diagrams, variations of stock and train length in the Mon-Fri off-peak, and peak extras.

For instance, even though my first experience of the railway was in the early 80s, I'm now getting nostalgic for the SWT or Southern timetables of 2013 or 2014.

 

[pdeaves]

There are plenty of rail enthusiasts that really don't care what type of train turns up (another class X? - never mind; oo a class Y? - never mind). Rail enthusiasm extends to infrastructure, company structure, riding unusual routes, riding ordinary routes just to look out of the window, etc. In my opinion there will not be fewer enthusiasts. Rather, with generally more comfortable trains than days of yore (quieter, air con, etc. that the public expects) I suspect a slight swing (a bit, not much) towards more family activity (as compared to the more usual but not exclusive single male activity).

 

[mrcheek]

Rail enthusiasm's decline has been predicted for many years. Yet the hobby continues to thrive.

 

[DarloRich]

Yes - it will. It is an aging demographic. There are few youth team prospects coming through.

 

[Western Sunset]

All the younger people I see, and there are quite a number, seem to be taking videos for YouTube. I think the number of pure railway photographers and/or number spotters will decline. Railway book publishing seems quite buoyant though.

 

[Bletchleyite]

All the younger people I see, and there are quite a number, seem to be taking videos for YouTube. I think the number of pure railway photographers and/or number spotters will decline. Railway book publishing seems quite buoyant though.

The lure of television is ever present, but then equally radio is seeing a resurgence with podcasts and the likes, and some young people are into "proper" photography using an SLR rather than just snapping quick pictures of trains as part of the whole "creativity" thing young people like.

 

[yorkie]

I realise that this is a controversial subject, but I am wondering whether the number of active rail enthusiasts will decline in coming years.

I think there are factors that will cause people to lose a lot of interest, but there are other factors tha will counter this.

The railway does seem to be in a (hopefully temporary) downward phase at the moment, with cuts driven by Government spending cuts the apparent root cause.

However there is much talk of things like the peak never coming back to the extent that it did, due to more home working (personally I think this is just conjecture, but we will see).

If anything, leisure traffic is going to increase.

I don't think that a shift away from (long distance) commuting towards leisure is going to be detrimental to people having an interest in railways; if anything the opposite seems potentially more likely.

I can get enthusiastic about a wide range of rolling stock, including hauled stock and multiple units, so I'm not thinking about the actual stock itself. However, in the absence of obscure once-or-twice-a-day holiday specials and the like, it's arguably the peak that kept the recent, pre-Covid (let's say 2004-19) railway interesting. The existence of the peak means that stock allocations even in the Monday-Friday off-peak have been interestingly unpredictable - both the stock type and the train length - as many workings are designed to ensure the right stock is on the right train for the peak. For instance, from a rail enthusiast POV I welcomed SWT's decision to continue with two classes of unit, the 444 and 450, thus keeping the CIG/VEP spirit alive. (And I do miss the two separate liveries for these two classes. I think I'd have liked to have seen SWT continue...)

While no-one can predict the future, the trends, even before Covid, seemed to be towards a fixed-length-all-day railway with perhaps only one class of unit (Thameslink is a very good example). But this trend, at least, had the standard pattern augmented with peak extras. The post-Covid railway will presumably keep the fixed-length formations, but without the peak extras.

There are likely sound economic reasons for this, but it's not so good from a rail enthusiast POV, at least IMO. Thus, with a more predictable and less varied railway, will we see less rail enthusiasts in the coming years?

People may be interested in railways, or they may be interested in trains, or they may be interested in travelling, or any combination of these.

These are different interests which are not mutually exclusive and there is significant overlap. Some people are interested more in the systems themselves rather than the actual infrastructure or trains, while others simply enjoy the travel experience.

I think that there is going to continue to be a decline in people who are into train "spotting" and even photography to some extent, but more people are likely to have an interest in railways and travelling. Their interest will often not be obvious.

Perhaps people like @HST43257 (who I think is based very near me) and @TT-ONR-NRN may have some thoughts on this; are/where there many young people with an interest in railways and/or trains at your school/college/uni? There are no doubt a few other youngsters on this forum who may be able to shed some light on this subject too.

 

[geoffk]

All the younger people I see, and there are quite a number, seem to be taking videos for YouTube. I think the number of pure railway photographers and/or number spotters will decline. Railway book publishing seems quite buoyant though.

You don't see the large number of "spotters" on platform ends that you used to see in steam days, although Doncaster and Carlisle still attracted quite a few when I was last there. I still meet plenty of photographers, mostly from the retired generation. I think there will always be enthusiasts but, as has been said above, it's almost entirely a male interest, with very few from ethnic minorities.

 

[Neptune]

Looking back at the 80’s when there would be dozens of people platform ending at any major station on a normal Saturday with nothing special going on then yes that aspect of the hobby has declined to what seems to be almost nothing (I haven’t platform ended since the early 90’s mainly due to pursuing other interests that naturally came around my late teens and then family life and work took over).

However people seem to have other interests in the industry as mentioned above such as infrastructure and organisation rather than just trains themselves so there will always be that.

I preferred the railways of 40 years ago (in the same way I preferred football in the 80’s but I try to hark back to neither as it doesn’t achieve anything) and see it for the industry rather than the trains these days. Working for the railway all my adult life certainly makes me sometimes weary of the whole industry and it certainly isn’t a hobby anymore.

 

[AlterEgo]

It’s probably not going to decline but change. Enthusiasm is now mainstream; look at Francois Bourgeois or Geoff Marshall or any number of train channels on YouTube and Tiktok which is consumed by ever more casual consumers.

 

[jfowkes]

It’s probably not going to decline but change. Enthusiasm is now mainstream; look at Francois Bourgeois or Geoff Marshall or any number of train channels on YouTube and Tiktok which is consumed by ever more casual consumers.

Or indeed Tim Dunn, occasional lurker on this very forum.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It’s probably not going to decline but change. Enthusiasm is now mainstream; look at Francois Bourgeois or Geoff Marshall or any number of train channels on YouTube and Tiktok which is consumed by ever more casual consumers.

I think there's a cultural shift there. Spotting greasy old DMUs and locomotives is seen as geeky, whereas something like an ICE is just cool regardless of who you are.

 

[notverydeep]

Though it's not the stock that I'm talking about (even though I often hark back to the years of CIGs, VEPs and hauled XC trains). It's more the move towards predictability, for instance fixed-length formations all day, uniformity of stock (Thameslink, Greater Anglia - both of which have replaced units that were relatively new) and few or no peak extras.

The 2004-19 period didn't feature the classic stock but was still IMO interesting due to unpredictable diagrams, variations of stock and train length in the Mon-Fri off-peak, and peak extras.

For instance, even though my first experience of the railway was in the early 80s, I'm now getting nostalgic for the SWT or Southern timetables of 2013 or 2014.

Internationally, these factors are probably most true of the railways of Japan (like Great Britain, nearly 100% multiple unit operated), yet it has a very large enthusiast community and a significant heritage sector...

 

[Dave W]

It’s probably not going to decline but change.

I think this is my view. It'll evolve - perhaps smaller in overall numbers, but greater in visibility?

This probably begs the wider question of "what is a rail enthusiast, anyway?" - just a brief scan through this forum shows hugely varying interests: infrastructure, signalling, ticketing, freight, etc, etc. - some will include the new raft of internet folk in that; others, I'm sure, would be rather less keen.

Will the number of enthusiasts about certain specific parts of the railway decline? Almost definitely yes. Whether that results in a decline in overall numbers is less clear to me.

 

[Paul Jones 88]

The West Anglia Main Line was where I became interested in the railway back in the 70s, I'm afraid that if I was a kid today in the same location that wouldn't be the case as the excitement and variety of the 70s has gone.

 

[PeterC]

I see similar discussions in my other interests and SWMBO sees them in hers. Young people do not take the same routes into interests that the older generation did.

 

[Western Lord]

There are plenty of rail enthusiasts that really don't care what type of train turns up (another class X? - never mind; oo a class Y? - never mind). Rail enthusiasm extends to infrastructure, company structure, riding unusual routes, riding ordinary routes just to look out of the window, etc. In my opinion there will not be fewer enthusiasts. Rather, with generally more comfortable trains than days of yore (quieter, air con, etc. that the public expects) I suspect a slight swing (a bit, not much) towards more family activity (as compared to the more usual but not exclusive single male activity).

Pray tell us where you have found these more comfortable trains. The general view seems to be that almost all new trains are less comfortable than the ones they replace.

 

[67thave]

I see similar discussions in my other interests and SWMBO sees them in hers. Young people do not take the same routes into interests that the older generation did.

Younger individuals seem to be significantly more interested in urban railways than mainline services from my experience. This may have some relation to the rise of recent city-centric online transit movements (particularly NUMTOT).

 

[nw1]

Interesting discussion, thanks for the replies so far.

I do want to clarify that I am not trying to compare let's say the 2010s with the 1980s, for example. I am trying to compare the likely state of the railway in the next few years with anything up to and including 2019.

I will agree that in some cases, it's the actual journey rather than the stock that is the main area of interest, though these days I will admit that excitement about the actual journey mostly only occurs when I travel out of the UK. That's not to say that UK train travel isn't pleasant in many cases, but I no longer get the same excitement out of travelling from say Reading to Birmingham that I did in let's say 1984, when Birmingham seemed incredibly far away.

Of course, relating to the comments regarding different preferences for different generations, I think the cliche that the norm of your teenage years becomes the expected norm of the rest of your life holds true, though I would probably extend teenage to twenties in my case. Away from the railways, I used to find the pop charts very interesting when songs would go up and down, and not seemingly hang around the charts for months like they do these days. Consequently I find it hard to understand why anyone would find following pop charts interesting these days, as they barely change much week-to-week (and I'm talking about the 'liveliness' of the chart rather than the quality of the music in this case, though I also preferred the actual music in the past...) but many teenagers of today would probably think otherwise.

 

[DNCharingX]

Or indeed Tim Dunn, occasional lurker on this very forum

Don't forget Jago! Anyway, responding to the forum post, I don't think so?? I'm hardly qualified to comment but I feel like rail enthusiasm is still there, look at this forum!

Maybe not in the same form it was in the 70s, though. For me, all locos are interesting, as someone above pointed out, rail enthusiasm isn't necessarily spotting unusual locomotives.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Pray tell us where you have found these more comfortable trains. The general view seems to be that almost all new trains are less comfortable than the ones they replace.

I hate the Fainsa Sophia with a passion, but the 80x have better legroom than anything BR ever built. Comfortable is relative.

 

[LethalDrizzle]

IMHO, sadly, yes I think enthusiast levels will decline. For my money, the reason is pretty simple - compared to certainly BR days and the immediate aftermath, the railways are just too good at repeatedly moving hordes of commuters. The drama and unpredictability have largely gone, along with the feeling of "soul" that BR had. There was something romantic about standing at the open window of a near-empty Mk1 while a, say, 33 clattered it's way through the night half an hour late, and that's just not an experience available in a clinical Desiro (apart from the lateness).

 

[MattRat]

What I've personally noticed is less of a desire to preserve units. Plenty of units will either be going for scrap or will be considered for scrap, and I see very little drive to try and just say even one unit. It's harder now because some of them are electric and you'd have to drag them around unless you either put batteries in or cough up enough cash to electrify the line you are using, but I still think more units deserved to be saved.

Maybe they don't entice people's hearts the same way as steam or old diesels, but they are still a piece of history.

 

[ComUtoR]

I hope it doesn't. I do agree that it will change significantly but I think I would mourn the loss of the 'traditional' Enthusiast.

We need people who will do everything they can to preserve heritage, either now or in another 100yrs. History is important and as the railway evolves, so will its history.

Decline is a long way off and many weird and wonderful things make an 'Enthusiast'

 

[RT4038]

The West Anglia Main Line was where I became interested in the railway back in the 70s, I'm afraid that if I was a kid today in the same location that wouldn't be the case as the excitement and variety of the 70s has gone.

My Father was an avid rail enthusiast. He thought that BR Standard steam locomotives were boring (they replaced some of his favourite types from teenagerhood) and their introduction had debased the interest on the railways. As for diesels ...... bah! I, however, had my interest kindled in the final years of steam and BR standard locos were as interesting as any other steam loco, but I have interest in the first generation diesel locos and more particularly the diesel railcars of that period. I don't find later generations of trains quite so interesting but there is still plenty of fascination in the modern railway, even if it is akin to a giant metro set [and there is plenty of interest in metro systems too!]

 

[RichJF]

Hopefully there are others like myself (early 30s, rail buff) who enjoy things like modern EMUs & modern diesel locos just as much as the historically important stock. I don't think the demographic will decline, but it will morph into something that we're yet unfamiliar with.

ie the love for steam might wane with one generation, the love for blue diesels will rise as that community enters retirement, then the future love for preserving EMUs might rise once the current young rail generation reach middle age.

 

[Western Sunset]

Start saving for an IET...

 

[nw1]

My Father was an avid rail enthusiast. He thought that BR Standard steam locomotives were boring (they replaced some of his favourite types from teenagerhood) and their introduction had debased the interest on the railways. As for diesels ...... bah! I, however, had my interest kindled in the final years of steam and BR standard locos were as interesting as any other steam loco, but I have interest in the first generation diesel locos and more particularly the diesel railcars of that period. I don't find later generations of trains quite so interesting but there is still plenty of fascination in the modern railway, even if it is akin to a giant metro set [and there is plenty of interest in metro systems too!]

I think that is the precise problem IMO. It's not the stock (there was still plenty of interest in let's say 2013, as I said above), it's the predictability of the workings.

Having said that, I think my interest would have been more sustained had the 2019 railway and its full timetables continued. For instance, I was enthusiastic about the original GWML timetable of 2019 before Covid struck.