MR changes finally public

[ScaleCraft]

https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/ ... ?3,4332439

What one knows and what one can say before it is "officially released" are two different things.
Neil Besougloff out at Clambake and MR.

[Mitch]

Maybe MR is goin' broke. They've been seriously tryin' to drum up business for a while now. I get at least 3 e-mails a week tryin' to get me to buy the mag.

[ScaleCraft]

Who knows? First Neil, then Photobucket...what's next?
I do know advertising revenue is down everywhere. Model Railroad shops and suppliers are closing up faster than Scrooge's wallet.
We ought to start a poll on which Model Railroad pub goes out next?

[Rufus T. Firefly]

We ought to start a poll on which Model Railroad pub goes out next?

OGR is still for sale...........

[Chris Webster]

Neil Besougloff out at Clambake and MR.

FWIW, I first heard of this back on June 28, when a magazine columnist posted about it on the Maine On2 Yahoogroup:

As of last week, Neil has retired (early; his original plans called for retiring in 15 months), and managing editor Hal Miller, an O scale modeler, is acting editor.

[rex desilets]

A couple of prejudiced observations:
The MR magazines are tired. I stopped buying Model Railroader years ago. Nothing new, especially in O Scale. Lots of catering to electronic hobbyists.
I suspect that the decline in editorial content leads the decline in advertisers. Why submit an article, jumping through the hoops the publishers demand and waiting for months for a paltry monetary reward? We can write up a project and submit it to one of several forums, with photos (except MTJ) and get feedback nearly in real time. Fewer published articles attract fewer readers that attract fewer advertisers.
I expect the trend to continue.

[robert.]

Print media is dead. Like Rex alluded to people give it away on the internet. Youtube model train videos. you can spend days watching free stuff. Guys have free podcast on how to build, weather, wire, plane and collect. There is always some narcissistic guy willing to review his latest high dollar purchase. A 20 year run at any one job is a pretty good stint. He must have loved what he did.

[De Bruin]

My (admittedly jaundiced) view about MR is that it has always primarily been a catalog, lot's of adverts and some occasionally useful reviews. As a kid enjoyed it a lot more; I was in 3-rail then and the articles on scale layouts, traction and narrow gauge were positively entrancing. After college,once I got into 1:48 traction and later 2-rail I completely stopped buying MR as it had pretty nothing in it I was interested in. I always enjoyed RMC and Mainline Modeler more as they seemed to focus more on prototype model building. Obviously the internet has impacted ad/circulation revenues for the print periodicals as much as dried up so much general brick & mortor retail. I do think the new White River reincarnation of RMC is actually a pretty good read, at least I've been enjoying the ones that have picked up. Nicely laid out and printed, and interesting stuff. I still like magazines and print newspapers, I likely will only give up my Sunday Times in print when I'm no longer capable of reading or completely broke.
Pete

[ScaleCraft]

I knew about this before 28JUN...just. But, the rules of engagement are, can't say anything until it's published or released...and funny thing, Clam Bake hasn't said a word, and what I hear is they probably will not say anything at all.
I know what you're saying about writing, submitting and then waiting, and waiting...for a mere stipend.

I wrote reviews for years.
They were not "gee, this is nice" tomes.
Often took the engines fully apart, documented issues, with photos, mentioned how utterly stupid some things were...and THEN generated "field fixes" so you didn't have to mail the silly thing back for "repair"...which generally meant your detailed, relettered unit went in the crusher on the loading dock and you got a "new" one with the same issues you had when you sent your "old" one in for repair.

One particularly stupid escapade was replacement trucks for a Shay..since the first two versions were plastic housings and had a tendency to split and crumble into tiny pieces (and, over the many years, every repair I have done...I have saved all those bits in case those SOB's decide to sue me)(and I have bags and bags and boxes and boxes stored of crumbled bits), the last version had metal trucks.
Okay, first ones were not "dcc friendly", meaning wheels were tied to motors in the trucks, and two wires to house load.
Replacements had an adaptor you could use, since the new trucks were split...two wires power, two for motor..and the adaptor tied them together externally, then two wires to house load.

Cut your old truck wires at the truck pivot and discard pivot. Strip wires back 1/2" or so, twist wires from new adaptor onto loco wires...and wrap with MASKING TAPE.
Seriously.

So, the review fixed that..solder and shrink sleeve...and added...you did not have to insure direction with wires...rather hold one truck up off the rails and apply power. If the one truck matched headlight direction, you're good. Power off, drop that truck onto the rails, test the other end. If either is wrong, remove two machine screws from that truck, drop off the adaptor, ROTATE the adaptor 180 degrees and re-attach truck.

NONE of that was in the instructions.
Stupid.

We won't even get into plastic worm gears with cracked hubs from the factory..and it was just a matter of time until the plastic shrunk more and the crack propagated out and you had fully free rolling equipment.

Or the big engine, where nobody wanted input prior...and they specified 28, 29 or 30:1 and double lead worms....and got 30:1 but no double lead...and the factory admitted the error..and fixed it..and NOBODY checked....and they had a double lead, 15:1 gearbox on a narrow gauge steam engine that in real life is placarded for what, 30MPH in the cab max speed...and the model tested out at 63 MPH?

All that...weeks of work...and what you got for your time would pay you coffee bill at St. Arbucks for a week.

And the magazine decided folks didn't want that kind of in depth reviews...including current draws and voltages...and wheel gauges out of the box...so I was out, and consumers told them (and me) that if they couldn't read those kind of reviews before they bought, they weren't interested, and the market for that companies products has dropped off tremendously.


Back to MR for a moment....I remember the day I did a repair on an H0 brass Gem steamer for a shop I did work for...1975, I think..wrote a letter to MR telling them what I had found and how all those years of reading MR and feeling, based upon their articles, that unless I used KD's and brass locos, I could not be considered a "serious" Model Railroader.....yeah, not stated that way, but think about all the baloney published.....and they ignored me. THAT was the last time I ever bought an MR. I would read copies if someone gave it to me, but I no longer had any dollar investment into the mag.

I subscribe to no magazines any longer at all...well, one or two Veterans Mags are part of the membership, but if I could turn them off I would.

[up148]

I agree (sadly) that paper magazines are most likely coming to an end of the track, at least from the perspective of a rookie looking in from the outside. But, when i just like to sit around and read about trains, layouts, how-to's and new products, it's hard to beat the paper format. Storage is an issue, but since I never store any of the ezine articles, having them in paper form is better than no article at all. But, I'm terribly old school, so what do I know.

BH

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I agree (sadly) that paper magazines are most likely coming to an end of the track, at least from the perspective of a rookie looking in from the outside.

Many of my technical journal went 100% electronic more than a decade ago; some are both; none are paper only. And, they are no cheaper than before in any format,

But, when i just like to sit around and read about trains, layouts, how-to's and new products, it's hard to beat the paper format.

And, you far from alone, and OST thanks you for your support; however, the 1st 60 or so issues are free to download in pdf format. More will be coming in the near future, I hope!

Storage is an issue.......

I understand that and that issue in part contributed to my discontinuing 2 subscriptions to model RR'ing mags, but then I also noted that I wasn't even reading either in any depth, and that less & less in both was even interesting to me.

But, I'm terribly old school, so what do I know.

Again, you are not alone and you also know what you prefer.

[prrjim]

Personally I like the paper magazines. I have tried the digital ones, and I don't find them as convenient. the darn computer kept falling off my lap while I sat on the throne! Now maybe if I had a "laptop", it might work better.

but it is just nice to have something to hold. and I often read while in an easy chair or in bed right before I go to sleep at night. Just grabbing a magzine off the night stand next to the bed just seems comfortable.

As for MR, I have faded away from it for many of the reasons above. I do like RMC better, but sometimes there are no layout articles in their issues and I like them best. I also get "O Scale Trains", primarily for the ads and to support an all O Scale 2 rail publication.

[rex desilets]

A few more observations re Model Railroader.
Began reading MR in the Forties....
It was a fine magazine until the early Sixties, when the slot craze hit. (I wonder if the demise of steam played into that..) Early editors John Page and Paul Larson did a splendid job of publishing meaty articles on building things and providing prototype drawings and information. Mel Thornburgh did several articles on scratchbuilding locos that hold up today, and he had no/none/nada power tools. John Armstrong wrote article after article on layout design. Eventually, Lynn Westcott took over. He was really innovative (e.g. hard shell scenery, L-girder benchwork) but he began the focus on the electronic part of the hobby, down which road MR has traveled all these many years. For a few years one could buy the occasional MR for a good article or set of drawings, but, of late, these seem never to show up.
As far as payment for articles goes, in the very early days Al Kalmbach wrote that articles should be submitted for free as your contribution to the hobby. Things have changed, but any payment is still more an honorarium than compensation for the effort required to not only build a model but to produce acceptable material for publication, especially photographs.
Today, with a whole lot less effort, on-line publishing allows one to publish with no delay....
As far as print vs electronic publishing, it does seem that printed material comes in smaller and smaller type for my tired eyes. I've even given up print books. If an electronic article has material I need to use in tangible form, I can print out what I need; even read on the john
Read the Times in print? perish forbid. Although the newsprint is useful for building up scenery.

[robert.]

in order to get younger members magazines will need to go digital. One thing I noticed with MR any OGR is photo quality seems to be down. Not in subject matter but print and color. They seem to be green/blue or photoshopped.

[J. S. Bach]

I noticed the same thing in a few issues of Railway Modeller but they seem to have gotten back to their original standard.