As a preface to the following I am not a bean counter. I prefer quality over quantity and attention to detail is of the utmost importance.
I have read on this forum, Atlas’ forum and others about MR mag’s staff and the “drop” in popularity of the magazine. I know you can’t please all the people all the time, however it is obvious that more and more MR readers no longer subscribe due to their feelings of lessor quality information being published. Kalmbach’s current senior staff, should take a look at the staff changes made over the past few years vs. the decline in readers and make adjustments to improve their magazines quality and get back the “Best Magazine” status it once had. Here are a few things I would like to see added/changed.
As it is said, “a picture is worth a thousand words” and I enjoy seeing the larger layouts built by a dozen or so people, it gives me ideas for things which I can add to my layout. However, I would think that most of us which subscribe to MR have smaller layouts in basements, a small space in the house/apartment or in the garage. I for one would like to, see/hear about, the small home layouts set up on a sheet or two of plywood.
We’re not all experienced writers and it seems that the articles accepted and published have been written by “the few” experienced writers that we hear from most of the time. Would it be asking too much to have MR add a small staff of 3 to 5 writer/photographer teams, somewhat like news reporting teams, dedicated to going out and helping those MRR enthusist that aren’t experienced writers/photographers get their small “home” layout recognized. If they added a couple-three of these articles each month 30 or so great “small” layouts could be seen each year by the thousands that subscribe to MR. They could choose their reviews by reading this forum. Their are many of you here that obviously have great layouts and a lot of “how-to” knowledge.
I’ve been hearing about this decline in popularity for about 10 years now. If it were true, there’d be no one left to subscribe to the magazine by now.
Look, the fact is, people who complain there’s been no coverage of small layout are simply wrong. I can point to any month’s copy and show them to you. In fact, they’re running a whole series on Iain Rice’s desktop layout right now, and it’s a very nice layout indeed. The “GMR” annual typically feature several small layouts as well. The staff traditionally builds a project layout on a 4’x6’ or 4’x8’ every year or two. That runs as a complete how-to series.
What more do you want than that?
In term of the DCC vs. DC issue, this magazine has always been about advancing the hobby. One day, DC will be dead and DCC will be it. To pretend otherwise is closed-minded. And people who want to learn DCC deserve to see it featured by a professional publication. I don’t use it yet, but I’m reading and learning and will eventually convert.
Your 3 to 5 teams (6 to 10 people) would cost a minimum of $180,000 in salary alone each year, and never mind the huge travel expenses your plan would entail. Where would that money come from? Increased subscription fees? Oh, yeah, I can imagine the hue and cry on this board if THAT happened, regardless of the content improvement.
The magazine can’t be all things to all people.
I’ll tell you this, though: I’ve tried to read RMC and the rest. Poorly written, poorly edited, bad photo quality, bad reproduction. If I absolutely must have the data in one issue, I’ll buy it, but I don’t bother to subscribe to them.
It is the best as far as I am concerned. That does not mean MR should rest on its laurels. It should watch for opprtunities to improve of course. I have copies going back to the fifties and there is something in all of them for me. The problem is that I have not enough time to execute on all the ideas presented that I am interested in.
Due to attrition the staff of MR has changed - granted. And new people have to get their feet wet.
But this thread gave me an idea to present and I need to do some thinking on it first. There is a way for MR to maybe be on the cutting edge of articles and photographs presented in MR.
And what about “How to” articles to help everyone. The info for this could come from older model railroaders that have done things and in the sharing that accumulated knowledge would be there for all from now on. There is already a tremendous amount of this material in the past issues of MR.
What needs to be done is attract new and younger people to this hobby of ours. That in turn would expand subscription rates of MR over time.
There was awhile ago a thread on this forum talking about the high price of model railroading now as opposed to yesteryear. For a kid in the fifties model railroading was expensive then as it is now. Guess what, I learned how to build things from scratch, and save my money for things I could not build. The plans in MR helped me immensley. I used strip wood, X-Acto tools, model paint, and had to buy couplers and trucks. Track and locomotives too. A three to four dollar kit back then was not cheap. Buildings, roadbed, scenery - all scratch built. And it was fun.
WHO PUTS OUT A BETTER MAGAZINE THAN MODEL RAILROADER ???
It’s the only thing I subscribe to. I love this MRR. I read it cover to cover and
apply what I read to my working. The numbers do not lie. MRR IS THE BEST.
I can’t speak for everyone but as for myself I have read other railroad mag’s (even RMC) and all I can say that I still prefer MR over the rest. Although there might be an interesting story in one issue of RMC that might cause me to buy one off the shelf, if you put both mag’s (RMC - MR) side by side and compared them there is no question who has the better mag. MR pictures are high quality compared to RMC’s pictures that look like the mag is stuck in the late 80’s. ( I hope Hal Carstens dosen’t read this!) Both present good articles, but MR is more reader friendly with a mag that is better laid out and has a lot of color instead of just black and white. (Often the case of RMC to.) As for the “How-To’s”,
MR is jampacked full every month of them. And last but not least… DCC is the way the hobby is headed. Yes there is a lot of modelers who still have DC. But there is still articles every month for people who have DC and DCC. I think Terry Thompson and the rest of the staff at MR (new and old) are doing a fine job. Like other people have stated you can’t please everyone. If people keep an open mind and read my comments I think most - not all will agree with me. The one thing I do agree with is there ought to be more done to promote the yonger people in the hobby. I’m only 22 but to say the “oldheads” in the hobby are the only ones who have something to offer I think are wrong. Anyway here is to MR for 70 great years and keep up the good no wait - “great” job.
I think this is the best all around model railroad magazine.
I don’t think there is a lack of the starter size layout 4x8, but more a lack of the between 4x8 and the spare bedroom size. Say 5x9, 6x10, 8x10. There’s been plenty of 4x8 layouts, but let’s face it there aren’t that many really different ways to do an HO layout on a piece of plywood - I think I’ve seen them all, more than once.
But it is the one magazine that really emphaszies layouts, which is and always has been my objective. I suspect that part (all?) of their drop is due to dilution among the many more magazines available today. Heck, Kalmbach puts out three themselves dealing with models - MR, CTT, and Garden Railways.
won’t open the book again? a couple years ago I bought the book on animation, lighting and sound and I still check it for reference, and that book on small layouts I got 6 years ago still comes in handy.
i think it is the best magazine to read for MRR. being 17 and just starting i’d like to see more how to things. like my dad plays guitar and he gets a few guitar magazines each month they have different things in there like how to tune your guitar differently and how to fix this and add this or that. that would be nice to somebody just starting instead of seeing someones huge layout and all the face time and background of people.
i’d also like to see a section for teens, well say 15-19 or so. that would be great. this way we can see what other high school aged people have and how’re they’re doing. also read and be able to see where people get there money. cause i need more $$ to keep buying more and more stuff.
i know there are books out there that show how to do stuff but i don’t want to buy a whole book just to figure out how to say change a coupler or tires. i’ve bought 3 books so far and one is just the basics, granted that is nice to have but if i just want to say change a coupler i don’t want to have to buy a book with stuff on how to super detail a locomotive.
also a section on smaller layouts like suggested above would be great. its cool to look at all these huge layouts done by clubs and retired people but say some small layouts like 4x8s who are done by working class people in there basement would be nice to see.
the only real big things i’d like to see are: how to sections i know there are some but for people just starting like basice weathering, adding couplers, little super detailing stuff. a teens section. this woul be nice to see what my fellow teenagers are doing with there layouts and what they have. and finally a section for smaller layouts. i know there have been a few articles but have like feature articles for the best layouts and then have a section dedicated to smaller layouts. just to see what people with restricted space are doing.
this is coming from a person who has read only 2 issues. so i may not have seen everything y
And after a lifetime, you will not have seen it all. An amazingingly satisfying never ending hobby once it takes ahold of you. Just an opinion of mine.
I just wi***hey would support more of the other scales. I’m an avid Nscaler, and I try to see if I can apply things from HO layouts to mine, but I am sure there are other wonderful layouts in N, S, O, G, etc. that MRR could do justice to. Sometimes I wonder if MRR is going the way of the Walthers mail order catalouge, all HO save for a page or two of N and O.
What I would love to see MRR do a story on though, is how manufacturers like Atlas and Kato pick what they are going to produce in a given production year. Or maybe some up and coming new manufactuers that may end up giving these guys a run for their money. Just my two cents.
OK, now the devils advocate-
I subscribe to MR, and I really enjoy it. If you check out the December issue there’s an interesting article on freight trucks, and the one on the bridge construction is good too. BUT! I wouldn’t call it “jam packed” with how to articles?? Now look at RMC for the same month. The article on building the AC4400CW, the box car conversion article, the DC or DCC or both article- I think they win this month.
I really get tired of the RMC bashing, the bad articles, the poor photography, etc… I am in this hobby for the trains, not to criticize magazines. Yeah, MR may be the “slicker” magazine but I don’t need that. If I want to see how something is done I don’t care if it’s on glossy paper or if the writer has a Masters in Journalism. I want a real modeller to tell me how it happened, and I don’t care if it’s on newsprint like in the old days. I don’t care if it’s in the Dec. 2003 issue of MR or RMC or in the Dec 1963 issues of either. Just enough info to get the little light bulb to come on and get me motivated to try it myself.
This hobby has it’s work cut out for it. We don’t need one mega publication to give us everything. If you’re worried about the quality, maybe Mr Carstens can charge the extra 45 cents per issue and buy better paper. But I’ll still buy it for the articles!
i’m an MRR fan…and everytime i go to the bookstore,i don’t see a whole lot of competion with model railroad magazines versus cars,trucks and half naked women magazines.
He might also want to pay for better photographers, printing pictures in color (my God, it’s 2003, not 1973!), editors who can fix the semi-coherent writing, and so on.
I guess you’re saying quality doesn’t count. Sorry, but in my book, it does.
So which magazine currently has “best magazine” status now, if not MR? I’d suggest that readership has more to do with number of people involved in the hobby–and, if what I’ve seen is any indication, interest in the hobby is going up, not down.
The current “a layout you can build” series is a bookshelf layout that takes up one-third the surface area of a 4x8 sheet of plywood. The last “layout you can build” series, the Turtle Creek Central, was set on, guess what, a 4x8 sheet of plywood. Last year’s MODEL RAILROAD PLANNING had a hatful of shelf layouts only 3 or 4 feet long, and the one before that had quite a few 4x8’s. I’m a small-space modeler too–but personally I’m pretty happy with the number of small-layout articles coming out of MR. Tho I do like to see big layouts in action–and sometimes a big layout has a section that would make a nice small layout all by itself…
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We’re not all experienced writers and it seems that the articles accepted and published have been written by “the few” experienced writers that we hear from most of the time. Would it be asking too much to have MR add a small
MR is great, but it can be greater. If they bring back Student Fare, that could help. The last 2 issues were pretty nice. Hopefully they can keep it up.
Well, You’ve missed my point.
I’m not saying RMC is perfect. MR does beat them if you’re looking at production quality. But look at the articles themselves, the content and not the construction. Which one has more value to a model railroader? If you like to look at nice pics of room sized layouts, built with lots of help and a fat wallet, OK. But I would like to see what happens before it shows up in MR. RMC -USUALLY- has more that I can use. Use the December articles for examples- the average modeler would be building the diesel or modifying the boxcar before he’d be building a 12 foot long bridge. It’s almost like watching The New Yankee Workshop on PBS. Yes you can build the same stuff, if you have the same equipment and experience. But your’s isn’t going to look like Norm’s unless you learn how to do the basic stuff first. If all you’ve ever done is tack flextrack down to plywood, put Kadees on a loco and build a couple basic kits, that bridge is a long way off. But you might look at the boxcar mods and think “I can do that”. Do a couple of those, then tackle something bigger. Let’s not scare off the new guys with huge projects and lots of attittude.
And like I said, I really enjoy MR too. I still have the first issue I ever bought in 1974, I still go back through those and my pile of older ones I’ve gathered here and there. Great inspiration! And my all time favorite series of articles was the “How to scratchbuild a Steam Loco” series from a few years back- Excellent work! There have been many many others, and I am sure there will be many more. And like Jetrock said, They already are the best overall. But can they be better? Maybe the editorial staff thinks it would be trite to keep re-running the same type of article every couple months, but for beginners and intermediate modelers it’s the bread and butt
Yes MR’s “glory days” in terms of shear magzine page size have gone by 200++ pages etc , I expected a huge JUMBO 70th issue today, oh well… ( is this temporary) however with 9/11 all magazines suffered a loss in ad revenue and MR is no stranger to that Im sure we can all remeber larger size MR magazines.
I can also surmise that companies turned to the internet also. In the last 5-10 years specaility magazines might have also taken readers away from MR,ie
Garden Railways G scale crowd has a few choices now, O guagers have a couple of choices so do N scalers , Narrow guagers almost everyone who read
MR 20 years ago can now subscribe or go to a speciality magazine. Me I just read/subscribe to them all, my wife does not care for 5-6 train magazines a month piling in however (another subject she is ok though)… but my favorite is still Model Railroader!
I’ve been reading MR for more than 30 years, and yes it has evolved, and no it hasn’t lost its popularity, but instead has changed for the better. Some folks won’t always like the new changes and thats what MR wants to hear about. Overall MR has been and always will be the best MRR Mag in the world.