Indeed, Bob, the hobby today is dramatically different from what it was two, three, or four decades ago. The distinct shift that you note in your post is nothing new to us old-timers. I and others have remarked on it at various times over the years on this and other forums.
In point of fact, the change hinges on the sort of individuals the hobby drew upon in the past and those it caters to these days. Back in the day model railroading was truly a craftsman's hobby. The average hobbyist enjoyed a broad spectrum of hands-on talents that derived from everyday life back then and were also required by most hobbies of the period 1930's to the 1980's. These skills and talents are no longer broadly prevalent in our society today.
If you experienced the hobby first hand during the period under discussion it soon becomes clear that a drastic alteration took place rather suddenly between the 1990's and early 2000's. Up until that time model railroading publications were largely about scratchbuilding, or kit-bashing models, the latter approach using commonly available, inexpensive and mass produced rolling stock and structure kits always to be found on the shelves of your local hobby shop. With very few exceptions these models were obtainable a very reasonable prices ($5-$10) that had changed little from decade to decade. At the same time, the publications themselves were edited by highly talented hobbyists who had spent decades in the hobby and whose creativity was unmatched. They monthly presented clever ideas and approaches to modeling for the readership.
With the initial rise of Internet forums one saw a supposed demand voiced by newcomers for increasingly superdetailed, RTR, models largely because they lacked the necessary skills or the desire to expend time actually modeling. In large measure these individuals seemed to be older fellas who never had experienced the craftsman hobby in their youth, or graduated beyond perhaps Lionel or Flyer trains as kids. But now as middle-aged or older adults with good incomes they wanted to take up model railroading as a hobby, yet found themselves lacking in the necessary traditional skills. Since the size of the hobby itself had been slowly shrinking since about 1980 the manufacturers welcomed the new blood and sought to meet their voiced needs for finished models, naturally at higher sticker prices. The more detail the manufacturers added the more these newcomers cried out for more specific, limited run, new models. The manufacturers followed suite...at ever increasingly higher prices and smaller production runs. The locomotives of the sort that typically sold for $35-$50 in the early 1990's have been replaced today by examples in the $300 to $500 range. While unquestionably better looking and running than those of the past, if priced are beyond 90% of today's hobbyists they hurt, rather than improve, the model railroading hobby. The same is true of $50 rollingstock, or $100 pre-built structures. In addition, I would point out that buying is not modeling and this hobby is called "model" railroading.
Also worth mentioning as an influence on the situation is that Model Railroader magazine underwent a major shake-up in its editorial staff about 2000. This saw the majority of the truly talented/experienced modeling staff leave the magazine. With the exception of David Popp, the replacements (including a Lionel hobbyist as the editor-in-chief!) were journalism majors no more skilled in model railroading than many of the magazine's latest newbie readers. Between the decline of inexpensive, shake-the-box models to act as fodder for the kit-bashers and the concurrent demise of kit-bashing articles (the MR staff were far more interested in "pretty picture" articles that lacked any substance at the time) the craftsman aspect of the hobby increasingly dwindled. Today the HO hobby far more resembles simply a scale extension of the Lionel hobby than it does traditional model railroading. And with the current escalating pricing structure and lack of outside exposure I see circumstances progressively hastening the hobby's sunset I'm afraid.
CNJ999