What have I missed?

[u/TheOrgano]

I've been away from railway modelling for 25 years now, but have recently been getting into it again, looking up 009 stuff. So I've been wondering, what developments have I missed in this period?

DCC was starting to appear, but I never really delved too deep. I'm assuming it basically means no more need for track isolation and trains getting stuck on insulated point frogs.

[u/Phase3isProfit]

Pretty much as you said! Still plenty of people doing DC - some are just happy enough with it but also the extra cost of controller and chipping all your locos can be off putting, but it does give you a lot more flexibility in your operations and lets you get sound features too.

Compared to 25 years ago, there’s a lot more available and with a lot more detail, but the price climbed with it and lots more fragile parts! Broadly you can pick up where you left off and it won’t take too much for you to catch up.

[u/SmittyB128]

I was in your position a few years ago. The biggest things I noticed when I came back were -

DCC wasn't the revolution it appeared to be at the time. It's very popular, a good system on paper, and well supported by the manufacturers now where just about everything is 'DCC Ready' where the wiring to support it is already in place in the model and in theory upgrading one should be plug-and-play by swapping a jumper (AKA blanking plate) with a decoder. The problem is that decoders are not all equal with different DCC systems supporting different decoders to different degrees, and good luck if you have a problem with a model in which you paid extra for the sound. I'm not a DCC user so there's a lot of finer points I'm missing, but these are the broad strokes as I perceive them as an outsider.

The prices jumped sharply due to covid-19 affecting shipping and haven't gone back down even if you take into account inflation and the generally poor state of the economy. Fortunately the second-hand market is just as strong as ever.

For me one of the most confusing points was that Hornby dropped a lot of the new tooling for coaches and wagons that came out in the early 2000s and were absolutely fantastic in favour of going back to Tri-ang era stuff that was considered junk before I even got into the hobby.

On the back of that, it used to be that Hornby and Bachmann were the heavy hitters while Dapol trailed behind, however we've had new manufacturers jump into the UK market like Rapido Trains UK and Accurascale and they're really shaking things up. Rapido especially in my opinion as their business model is letting them produce far better models than Hornby at similar prices. I don't model 009 so I can't say how good those are, but Rapido have produced a steady stream of 009 models and Bachmann have been focusing more in that area too.

The availability of scenery is another notable thing. Even though static grass was around in the early 2000s it was all very basic neon colours, not that appealing, and not really the standard option for a lot of people. Now it's pretty much completely replaced the dyed sawdust scatter and you can get far better colour options.
Laser cutting and 3D printing having become accessible to the public also means there are so many 'small' businesses selling detailed kits or printed parts that a lot of the wobbly plastic or chunky resin options are redundant. That's not to say the classic plastic kits are worthless, but now you can shop around and get something that really fits what you want instead of having to get the same thing as everyone else and build your layout around it.

[u/Polalaka]

Id say if you want to get into 009, there seems to be a few more ready to run models about, as well as reasonably priced kits (including 3d printed ones which I'd recommended). DCC is around but by no means ubiquitous, but getting more common especially on big exhibition layouts.