(I was going to select The Hermitage, a dire restaurant in Folkestone that served me rotten fish and then tasteless venison, but it appears that they also beat me to it!)
I just figure that the hobby market - model trains not least -are declining fast, and being maintained by an ageing customer base. I wouldn't want to see them go either.
From: 99% of gargoyles look like (MR_BASTARD)12 Jan 2013 21:23
One interesting thing is that Airfix (owned by Hornby) seem to be doing well, at least as far as releasing new kits goes. My interest in building plastic kits was recently rekindled after about 15 years when Gaynor got me a Battlestar Galactica Viper a couple of Christmasses ago. While I'm not building them at the rate my teenage self did, I've done a few others since then, and found that somewhat inevitably there are vibrant, informative and irredeemably geeky online communities devoted to the subject. The general concensus is that most of the new kits that Airfix are releasing are very good indeed, and are competing well against the far east alternatives, not least because exchange rates mean that the prices of the big Japanese brands are getting ridiculous.
I'm not sure if The Kids are buying them, but there seem to be plenty of middle-aged men with disposable income enough to buy multiple copies of the kits that interest them, and the time and inclination to spend hours arguing on the internet about the exact shade of sky blue used on the underside of Spitfires on July 17th, 1940.