Having been away from the hobby during the time MR magazine and this website transferred from Kalmbach to new management, I’m ready to take the plunge into fully digital content. I just began using the new online format and I’ve gotten comfortable navigating through the content. I let my subscriptions to the print forms for MR magazine and Classic Trains expire several months ago. I’m really looking forward to going through the archives of these two publications. I could see myself binge browsing through them, especially on bad weather days.
The question now is what to do with all those magazines I have saved going back to the late 1970s. I felt comfortable knowing I could go back and revisit them although I rarely ever did so. Now, they are just taking up space in plastic file cabinets under the benchwork. I could use the storage space to organize my ever growing collection of locos, rolling stock, accessories, etc.
Maybe I’m wrong but I doubt these printed magazines have any monetary value. My LHS used to sell stacks of these on their second-hand shelves, often as part of an estate sale. I don’t think they bother with these anymore. Even if someone was interested, I doubt it would be worth the postage required to ship them. Can anyone think of any reason not to just pitch these in the trash. Even doing that would require I spread the disposal over several weeks.
I’m really surprised print media has hung on as long as it has. Electronic media is so much more economical from a distribution standpoint. Earlier this week I exchanged emails with my brother, a retired newspaperman, about this subject. A long time ago I read that one of the reasons railroads got into trouble decades ago was they didn’t understand what business they were in. They thought they were in the railroading business when in fact they were in the transportation business. Likewise, newspapers publishers thought they were in the newspaper business when in fact they were in the information business. They were late to the party embracing digital publishing. If I were a newspaper or magazine publisher, I would abandon all print media and go strictly digital. I know there are people who prefer to sit down with aa cup of coffee and the latest printed issue of their favorite newspaper or magazine, but the number of those people are dwindling. Even an old fogie like me understands that electronic media is the present and the future and is ready to embrace it.
There used to be a website where you could do a search of all the model railroad magazines for information on back issues.
I think Kalmbach took that over. Since I cannot find that site anymore, I believe that Kalmbach let it lapse.
So now Firecrown promotes the digital back issue thing as part of the premium membership. I don’t see a search function, but at least one can look at back issues if one knows where to look.
But what happens if Firecrown has bitten off more than it can chew with all the purchases of this and that, as seems to be happening with the complaints on the forum? And then decides that funding this stuff is not worth it? I’m not sure that there will be another excentric individual willing to jump in as savior.
So suddenly all those magazines I’ve already paid for are lost because I’ve trashed them.
When I got the DVD’s for some of the magazines I had, I gave them away to someone who didn’t have that many. I also know a club that has a revolving rack of back issues where anyone can take what they want.
If you have the paper mag, you always have the mag. If you have electronic access, you are hostage to so very many potential roadblocks. I will not give up the paper copies of mags I feel are important resources.
If I referenced the old magazines more often than I do which is almost never, I would agree with you that the paper copies would be worth saving. As it is, those old magazines are just eating up storage space which I could use to better organize my layout room, which is something that is sorely needed.
I have a packrat mentality and I am always reluctant to throw anything out for fear that as soon as I do, I will find a need for it and I feel that reluctance to throw out my old magazines. I fear that after I do, the archives might cease to be available. I’m afraid that is just a chance I am going to have to take. This hobby is all about making choices and this is one I think I am going to make, even though I’m not fully comfortable doing it.
Another packrat here - and I read a lot, and have other hobbies & interests. I’ve hauled probably 1000+ old magazines around, but now I’m in my late 70’s and realize that I should deal with this before my kids have to. And NOBODY wants old magazines now. Rather than just recycle them, I’ve been re-reading them & then recycling them. Some just scanned through, some an article or 2, some a thorough reading. It’s actually pretty enjoyable - just like subscribing again. I went through 50+ years of Road & Track in about 3 years. Went through MR older than 2000 - chucked most but kept a few articles. Will revisit newer ones soon.
I still like paper better, but just getting way to expensive. MR is my last paper subscription, but will let it expire this year, and reluctantly join the switch to digital.
This has actually been a freeing experience getting rid of all that mental & physical weight.
My local hobby store, Railroad Hobbies in Roseville, CA (4014X coming on April10-11 btw) sells old issues of MRR, Trains, Classic Trains, MRC, PTJ, etc for 50 cents apiece, five bucks a dozen. Racks and racks, back to the 70’s up to last year. Always something interesting and worthwhile. I prefer this method of research and leisure reading rather than a computer screen. When I am done, I just bring them back and consider my purchase price as rent.
I just realized I have another option available. The archives allow downloading of a PDF for each issue. I don’t know if that capability goes all the way back to the earliest issues, but it is a way to retain copies while still freeing up physical storage space. I have no idea how much disk space that is going to require, but assuming it is not prohibitive, I could also make backup copies. That way if the archives suddenly are no longer supported, I will still have electronic copies available to me. It wil require some effort and likely the purchase of additional hardware, but it might be the best option for someone like me who wants to free up storage space but would still want to have access to past issues no matter what the future holds.
As someone who used to have a government job in a department that kept massive amounts of records in physical file cabinets, I heard a story which I don’t know whether it is true or not, but I could believe it is. Supposedly, a young, ambitious young worker was looking at the massive amounts of records in the filing cabinets and realized a good chunk them could be pitched without any serious consequences. He went to his boss and asked him if it would be OK to get rid of all the records prior to a certain date. His boss thought about it and then replied, “OK, but make copies of them first”.
I agree, it’s not for everyone but having shelves full of paper take up a lot of space. You have to keep them organized, clean and maybe you’ll go through them again one day. I wish all the Firecrown/Kalbach published books were available digitally.
As for the fears of loosing access, you can download any of the issues you like. I already have a home server, mostly for my work but they are fairly inexpensive and easy to set up, so I save all the new digital issues on there. I can then easily look at them on my computer, or tablet or phone without going to the web site.
My only complaint is that the search tool on the Trains dot com web site kinda sucks to be frank. It’s very difficult to search for much of anything. Heck sometimes I tried to search for something as simple as Model Railroader Month and Year and you can’t find the link to take you to that issue. I have to open a browser tab, use Bing (or Google) to search for the issue and that will link me to it right away. Don’t even bother to search for something like I want a layout about x, y or z topic. It will hit you with all sorts of links to all of their magazines and articles that have little to nothing to do with it. They really need to make a better advanced search tool.
Luckily there is the Railroad Magazine Index. So that helps this a lot. Railroad Magazine Index - Home
I was trying to find the indexes for past years but what I found only went back to 2005. I couldn’t find a way to page earlier than that. Are all the past indexes available somewhere online. I have a particular interest in late 1960s and early 1970s.
A few years ago I downsized out of my 4 bedroom house with a basement into a 2-bedroom condo with no basement. Downsizing meant I had to deal with boxes and boxes of Kalmbach publications and catalogs. As the the whole downsizing became overwhelming it quickly became apparent that there was no room for paper, including books, magazines, and catalogs. Nor was there a demand for any of it. I tried a garage sale, .25 a magazine, or free. At the end of the day it all went into the recycle bin.
The storage locker business is huge here in the Chicago suburbs. I read that almost all of them are filled with the ‘stuff’ we Boomers can’t bear to part with. The paper was the first to go. I pushed everything else to a 10x10’, then a 10x5’ finally a 5x5’. Now I’m storage free with only a few plastic totes of trains in the attic over the garage. Do I miss it, sure. But it was all sitting in boxes anyway. If I ever need to look up an old article in CTT I’ll just Google it.
I’ve never heard anyone utter the words, “Our house has too much storage space”. No matter how much space we have, we will soon fill it up with our junk that we don’t want to part with.
They probably stopped publishing the index in 2005 because that is the earliest online index I found. Now I know why and where to go to find the index for earlier years.
I was unable to find an index in the January 1973 index. Now that I think about it, didn’t the index come loose and not bound to the magazine. If that is true, I guess I’m out of luck finding earlier indexes.
