I’m not sure what you are looking for. The 1973 index would have had 1972 articles. Are you looking for something specific from 1972? Or you have all the other indices and just need the 1973 to complete the set?
In any case, since you seem to be willing to download stuff, you can always open every copy of the monthly magazine from the year of interest and copy the table of contents page.
BTY, no one has mentioned, and that’s possibly because no one other than myself is interested, those indices do not document the ads. There are occasionally questions about when such and such product was first advertised. If one were so inclined to research such information the index is not going to help.
Oh, and I recall that the index was a printed item, not a loose attachment.
I distinctly remember an ‘Index of Advertisers’ in MR for many years. It was normally in a more-or-less-random location near the back of the issue, but that location was given on the issue index page. That’s just one more step/recursion from the method of research that seems to be advocated in the original post.
But can someone explain to me what was published in earlier years of MR that helps with the topic of this thread? If someone is ready to go ‘fully digital’, that implies either ‘state-of-the-art’ of currently-implemented understanding of DCC, or one of the logical dead-rail or RF alternatives to that standard. While there are interesting technical alternatives to be found, is the OP really interested in re-creating them?
No, I don’t think he is necessarily interested in recreating anything. He stated somewhere that he was interested in looking through the old magazines on bad weather days.
Before I recycle old mags, I paruse and cut out articles and drawings and keep them in folders. You get to keep what’s interesting or pertinent, and greatly reduce volume. I also keep just a few whole magazines that I thought were outstanding overall or meaningful, like my first RMC. Dan
Specifically, I’m looking for an issue from either the early 1970s or late 1960s. It was about a large club layout in the Chicago area. I don’t even remember where it was I saw that issue and I am not even positive it was MR but knowing what I know now, it didn’t seem like the kind of article you normally see in RMC. I think it was around 1972 or 1973 that I saw it. The reason I am interested in it is it was the article that got me interested in model railroading again after having Lionel, American Flyer, and HO trains in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
I have currently downloaded PDFs for every issue from 1970-2001 although I didn’t take the time to go through the issues. Once I get up to the present, I intend to start working backward to 1934. It takes me about five minutes to download one year of issues so I’m looking at about 60 years worth, 300 minutes or 5 hours to complete the task.
I’m also doing the same with Classic Trains but that is a breeze because there are only four issues a year and it only goes back to 1999. I’m all the way up to 2021.
I want to have my own archive in case the online archives are no longer available.
IN APRIL OF 1955 A 50% COMPLETED LAYOUT HAD TO BE TORN DOWN BECAUSE THE WOOD SHOP REQUIRED MORE SPACE. AT THAT TIME THE PARK DISTRICT ALSO REQUESTED US TO RELOCATE TO AN 18X88 FOOT ROOM IN ANOTHER PART OF THE BUILDING. AT THAT TIME WE BEGAN CONSTRUCTION OF OUR THIRD LAYOUT. A PORTION OF THE ORIGINAL LAYOUT ALSO BECAME PART OF THE THIRD LAYOUT.
IN THE INTERVENING YEARS SINCE THEN WE WERE FEATURED IN MODEL RAILROAD CRAFTSMAN MAGAZINE A COUPLE OF TIMES AND WERE ON THE 1976 NATIONAL MODEL RAILROAD ASSOCIATION CONVENTION TOUR.
Thanks for that information. That sounds like what I was looking for and unless RMC creates an online archive, I’m probably not going to find that article.
It turns out RMC does have an online archive but it is only complete back to 2011. There are a few issues available from the time period I’m looking for and I didn’t see the article I was interested in.
|—|—|—|—|—|—|—|—|—|—|
|Railroad Model Craftsman| April|1956| 24| 11|Lake Shore Model Railroad Association HO layout| A. J. Kamm| H. Glade| 14| RMC, HO, layout plan, model photo|
The biggest problem with printed media is finding what you’re looking for. When I had an active subscription, I was able to search Kalmbach’s online index, but earlier posts seem to indicate this is no longer available. My train club has a nearly complete collection of Model Railroader mags going back to the 1930’s, with a few holes of course. No one seems to look at them, but since I took the time to organize them, I’d hate to toss them.
I’ve almost competed downloading every year of MR from the archive since 1970. I hope to finish getting up to the present sometime either today or tomorrow. Then I will start working backward from 1969 until the earliest year which is 1934. While the older issues are more of a curiosity for me, sometimes I’ll come across an old way of doing things that is still useful to this day, especially scenery techniques.
I am also going to get a digital subscription to RMC. As of now, their archive only goes back to 2011 unless I missed how to go back further. Perhaps their archive will one day go back to the beginning of their magazine.
I’ve already pitched my first batch of MR magazines. I don’t want to toss them all at once out of respect for my trash collector. I’ve seen him work and although the truck has a lift, he opts to do it manually because it’s just faster. I dumped about 18 issues and it’s amazing how much heavier that makes the trash can. Maybe I’ll look into burning them instead.
You were originally looking for a specific article.
I posted above where I believe you’ll find it. Did you not see that?
[quote off]
Unless I’m misunderstanding, the article you referenced was from April 1956. It might have been about the same club but I’m pretty sure the article I was looking for was not that old.