Having been a subscriber of Trains Magazine for only a few years, i find it interesting to compare the current magazine to some older ones I’ve obtained. At the risk of causing one of those "What I dislike about the magazine " type threads- Some things I found in the Sept. 1998 issue that I wish were still included: 1) Power Desk: 1/2 page of infor about which railroad has obtained what power. 2)Scanner: A whole page of tidbits of infor about things going on at lots of railroads 3) Railroad news photos: Five whole pages of color photos, and news to go with them! These three features add an incredible amount of interest to Trains Magazines of that time frame.
I wi***here were some place to officially register what we do (&don’t) like in a train magazine. Obviously, the Trains staff strives to do the impossible- being all things to everyone. Perhaps some some un-solicitated market research would be helpful to someone?
At least twice in the last 12 months I have received emails to respond to just such a survey from a Kalmbach publication (I subscribe to four of the five). The last one was from Trains Magazine on February 28 and asked me to rate most of the articles in the March, 2006 issue. IIRC, the online survey form also allowed me to add my comments at the end.
What I would suggest to any TRAINS professional who reads this thread is the following:
Use of sidebars to go into greater technical detail on matters discussed in articles.
In the steam days, TRAINS always (nearly always?) gave tractive effort, boiler pressure, size of drivers, fuel, using of automatic stoker, sometimes the superheater type, booster adding tractive effort if applicable, in just about any discussion of a steam locomotive or its class. Today, I would like TRAINS to do the same for diesels, old and new. Type of truck and wheel diameter, gear ratio, traction motor type and HP, prime mover type and HP and cyliner bore and stroke and number, type of supercharger, dynamic brakes or no, head end power or no, ATC or ATC.
For Santa Fe transcon article of about a year ago, I would have liked to know the rail weight, where concrete ties were used or intended to be used.
Do I get any seconds on this?
It certainly doesn’t sound like anything that would violate “trade secrets” or be of “possible enemy intellegence value.”
TRAINS was in its prime during the David P Morgan / John G. Kneiling era. Morgan was a dreamer and an advocate of new or provocative ideas related to railroads. Kneiling was an iconoclastic practitioneer more than willing to rile folks.
The combination was irresistable yet sometimes maddening to anyone from any POV regarding railroading.
Alas, now we have to get our discussionary jollies from this (ahem…) forum.
Murphy
If you haven’t seen it already, the June Trains has David Lustig’s byline on the Locomotives section of the news features. There is a page worth of Scanner tip tidbits spread through the News&Photos sections. I also liked the the old format of Railroad News Photos, but if you wanted to measure it up you might find close to the same number of photos within the eleven pages of the various News & Photos columns.
When daveklepper gets the issue, he will find a sidebar on Berkshire basic along with the story of the restoration of Nickel Plate Road 2-8-4 No. 765. Otherwise, I would agree that at times more details could be provided on the side.
One thing that won’t be found is the hard hitting opinion pieces of the type put out by Morgan and Kneiling with the strong implication that railroad management was stupid for not taking their advice.
I wonder just how much Morgan appreciated any dreamy suggestions from readers on how to “fix” his magazine?
Jay
By the way, I know for a fact that e-mails to the editors will be read. I have never had any good ideas about how the magazine might be changed, but I am sure that anyone that came up with something would receive an acknowledgement with thanks.
Oddly enough I just received an e-mail survey of the May issue of TRAINS magazine but have not responded yet.