Even were it accurate at one time, I suspect that Blandiver's MRE (model railway enthusiast) analogy is already outdated. There are a few who you may on occasion hear on the Mudcat bemoaning the fate of *clubs* as some-kind of embodiment of the 'The Tradition' and presumably the only way they can imagine folk music functioning, when in fact music festivals of all kinds - including folk - are thriving and pull in huge volumes of youth! The club model of folk where people participating together in singing and playing (occasionally even traditional songs and tunes) in a pub or function room is I think likely to die out with those who established them. And it's possibly there if anywhere that you might find the MRE worrying about passing along the baton. But I don't see anything pertaining to model railways in music festivals of whatever genre.