Interesting subject, with equally interesting outcomes.
I am lucky in life as I have a number of hobbies, I have an old Austin, which some so called journalists approached me to do an article on. To be frank, they were hopeless, no idea about classic cars, were not interested other than producing an article that they could sell. To be honest I should have written the piece myself, adorned with truths and not flowered up crap that they insisted was the situation that was only there to sell the article.
Now, one of my other interests is toy steam engines, Mamod, Wilesco, and more importantly all other fringe manufacturers over the last half century and some before. Now, that is a fringe hobby, with little support and not allot happening.
On the other hand look at Model Boating in comparison to the two above pastimes. Yes not a big as the classic car market, which is huge , but boating keeps two monthly magazines going, a multitude of boat shows, all over the country and lets face it, a quite substantial albeit small manufacturing industry which to it's credit is a world wide business opportunity for the UK. There is also a multitude of internet support, forums and web pages dedicated to boating and a growing vintage scene.
For what it's worth, whilst I accept that it's not mega, from what I see, model boating is going strongly or at least as strongly as it has ever done in the last twenty years.
