Official Union Pacific Steam Club, Facebook, membership 59,207
Abandoned Rails, Facebook, 63,900
Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society, 51,718 followers

I'm guessing all of the above exceed the circulation of Trains 25 years ago.

There are dozens and dozens of rail related groups with less than 10k members/followers. Add in data off Twitter and other social media, I suspect one can get more than enough data to mine for a long time.

Bob

I'd have to go look them up, but I believe Trains' paid circulation maxxed out at around 120,000 in the early 1990s, after Morgan's death and Keefe/Ingles' more "railfannish" approach to the magazine.

(Just checked, stated numbers rounded slightly, Statement of Ownership and Circulation: 79,000 Dec 1985; 94,500 Dec. 1990; 137,500 Dec. 1995; and from there I'm having trouble finding the SOO&C's.... the downturn seemingly started with Hemphill and a more "industry-themed" approach.)

But you're still comparing apples and oranges, as is just about ANY comparison of then and now.
You had to PAY for a magazine (or a Chapter newsletter) to be delivered to you. a social media "like" involves a couple muscle twitches and tolerating advertising (and of course likely paying for an ISP--which is comparable to asking if anyone still pays only to receive HBO or CNN now). A magazine article back then took many minutes to read, usually; a social media post, seconds at best. Back then you had to pay $50, then $30, then $20 for grainy VHS; now I can find full-time HD video for basically free (see also: music albums, Playboy, Penthouse, and any video tapes).

I "like" British sports cars but have never owned one. I "like" lighthouses and once organized an entire vacation around night photos of them, but have yet to go on a paid lighthouse boat tour. Whereas I am a Life Member of a British loco group (from back when it only cost me £150 for the privilege!), volunteered as staff for numerous music festivals, have donated to Project Numbat (look it up), and have donated to and volunteered with numerous libraries over the decades (today some young people groan audibly at the idea of having to *go to* a library to use a library card).............

The results of a study I had commissioned in 2019 showed that there were approx. 1,234,000 American's who said they had some interest in railroading, 614,040 that subscribed to at least one railfan publication, 241,666 that said they were knowledgeable about the No.American railroad diesel locomotive fleet, 122,361 who said they were knowledgeable about the No.American steam locomotive fleet and 66,261 who said they intended to ride at least one steam powered train that calendar year.

Interesting,eh??

Ross Rowland

Enthusiasm for preservation is a tough one to gauge. It is like the qualifying the biggest bridge. The big key here is young people. Organizations that rely on volunteer, staff, and visitors must court young people. Too often there are a bunch of old guys who are set on doing things that way they did them in 1996 or 1982 and do not attract young staff, volunteers, or visitors or constantly drive young people away when they do show an interest.

I've seen first hand how an organization can build up a group of 25+ volunteers under the age of 35 and a couple of boomers get upset things are changing and then drive everyone away. I literally saw an organization poised for unparalleled growth in the last 40+ years go back to muddling along trying to staff trains and patch up worn-out equipment.

I've seen other organizations with young people involved working and learning from the old heads. They are growing, building, restoring, and operating trains better than most.

Difficult to judge since without knowing the size and representation in the study group the numbers are not being compared to anything....... except everything. Not small, for sure, but if it were just "retail caucasian workers in the Chicago MSA" it would suggest much more interest than "all people in North America."

Good thread.

It's not dying. Even most people who can't tell a SD9 from a GEVO have some interest in trains because they are latently extremely cool.

That's mighty suspicious.
In 2019, the total combined paid publication of EVERY "railfan publication" (Trains, R&R, PTJ, Classic Trains, TRP, Railpace, etc.) was somewhere around 250,000................. and many subscribers overlap and subscribe to several magazines.............. and that doesn't count retail sales of individual copies........

Did the folks you commission also count votes in elections?

The interest in heritage and history has nothing to do with active preservation with wrenches and tools. Allow me to explain with my own experience. I restore and drive classic and antique automobiles. When I am at the grocery store, mall, or where ever the car gets attention. Sometimes I have people leave me paper notes stuck in the doors asking if the car is for sale call so and so. That has nothing to do with my effort, time, and money it took to restore it. Before I came along several were forgotten and abandoned cars in fields right next to highways. No one with the skills came along although in plain sight of everyone to take the effort to make it what it should be except me. Then when I did all the work everyone wants a piece of it. Same thing is true for rail preservation. The want to, need to, will do, and dream to groups are everywhere. Rail preservation being far more of a financial plunge pushes most to a bystander supporter (buying tickets for excursions afterward, donation drives, etc) instead of taking the reigns of a restoration themselves. That leaves few (most with donation and long term high financial projects experience) to bear responsibility for enacting a restoration effort. Alot of small well historic groups have had alot of the folks with appropriate skills to spearhead a restoration have either kicked the bucket or retired long ago. I foresee alot of consolidation/absorption among small groups to keep alive even the hint of preserving their equipment due to cost, lost interest, and lost skill sets among folks my age and younger.

My survey used telephone interviews with 5,000 households in each of the nations 4 quadrants ( NE,SE,SW,NW) and extrapolated to a national figure based upon the percentages gathered in each quadrant .

Certainly not precise but probably a valid estimate of the total foamer population??

Ross Rowland

This is why we're talking about "top of the funnel" engagement.

Obviously everyone who comes out to snap a selfie with the 4014 isn't going to go pickup a wrench at their local museum, but if 1 of 10,000 of them does, it's important to get that 10,000 their selfies.

Considering that two of the figures given are quite patently and blatantly erroneous (unless we're counting something absurd like the Wall Street Journal as a "railfan publication).................. Not at all.

I think I can hear the sarcasm from 1000 miles away !!!

If not how do you explain the fact that programs like NRHS's RailCamp sells out year after year, as do the copy cat programs at places like Ely and TVRM???

Well. maybe not this year due to a certain virus.

Bob H

Why so many people in one spot?
That's easy.
It's the crowd mindset. It's an 'event', and that attracts people.
But you just know those mothers who went there just to take their obligatory shot of their kid(s) less than arms' length of the pilot were not happy that they didn't get them.
I'm quite happy to hear that. I've seen many a maintenance stop for special trains ruined for everyone else by a line of mothers and their oblivious kids, who just have to be standing up against the pilot for any such shot, spoiling it for everyone else. And what happens to those photos? Did any of them every get really shown to anyone? I really doubt it.
Now, almost as annoying is the one guy who think his 'roster shot' is more important than anyone else's photo. He's the one who'll yell at moms to get moving from those photos they always take (and in one case in my early teens, I saw one like that grab the kid and haul him away to get his own kid-free shot. the kid's father took exception and that was the first time I saw an adult hit another in person). They'll also yell at someone for walking into 'their' shot from 30 feet away and make harrumphing noises while the crews stands in the way.
At the NRHS Tacoma convention, there was a trip on the Chehalis tourist RR with their 2-8-2 and I saw a line of guys do the harrumphing as the man who ran that engine in active service oiled around. They didn't understand it was a moment they should want to get, and didn't care even after I told them. Nope, they were there for the shot with nobody in it. Yeah, good luck with that, I said, as it wasn't a photo charter.
A friend of mine who worked in a photo lab of a drugstore back when that was the only option, said it best:
* Guys take pictures of stuff and sometimes, people creep into them
* Women take pictures of people and sometimes the stuff is the background
He could tell the gender of whoever took any roll of film jut by looking at the photos. To prove it, he had me pick 5 random stacks of prints and he guessed the gender of the name of the label (which was somewhere else he couldn't see at the time), every single time on his theory. I never forgot that.

I don't think it's good to write people who are interested off as "not interested in the work aspect" - You may have to get them interested, sure, but they will come. How many people who've become game programmers got interested by playing games; how many artists got interested by looking at art, how many writers got interested by reading... You see my point.

Watching something going by and/or snapping pictures is passive.

Actual rail preservation--from repainting to replacing siding, from lobbying local government for a museum to writing books or archiving photos, from being a volunteer railway staffer to buying stuff to donate to a museum or rebuild effort--is ACTIVE.

The original poster claimed "rail preservation is dying" and then attempted to refute that hypothesis with a photo of crowds around a preserved loco restored by a billion-dollar corporation for PR purposes. This does not refute his supposedly farcical claim.

I'm well aware that some person in that crowd MAY grow up to become the next Kelly Anderson, Kelly Lynch, Ed Dickens, J. David Conrad, David P. Morgan, Jim Boyd, etc. And, YES. it's great for the seeds to be sown. But tens of thousands attend individual college football games, and never set foot in either a gym training to be a football player or a classroom of said university.