I have been saveing model railroader magazines for 16 years. However the boxes are getting heavy and hard to move every three years. I was thinking of scanning all the magazines and saving them to my computer. Except to have the collection, is there any other reason to keep all those back copies?
Scanning them all? [:O] Holy smokes how long would that take!?!
I don’t know how long it will take to scan them all, but I can tell you, it may take YEAERS to achieve.
I tried doing this with some articles I wanted to save (without loosing track of them in the black-hole I call a home library ) and it took me about 5-6 hours to scan 5-6 articles (mainly scale drawings I wanted to use for a scratchbuild)
In other costs:
1/2 my sanity
3/4 the sanity of a help hot-line representative (my printer started having technical issues, and I almost took a swing at it with an ax. NOTE The 5-6 hour time-frame didn’t include the 2-hour “Please Hold” song and/or conversation of the representative)
daylight (I’m not going to burn the midnight oil; it may be needed for Hurricane Season)
On another note: NILE , I feel your pain.
Even though I have only been a subscriber to Model Railroader since December 2007, I have gone to train shows across Florida, and have acumulated what could be at least 12-25 years extra (20 years came at $8.00 a real deal) and the boxes are too heavy to lift without a fork-lift.
At least I don’t have to lift my whole layout[(-D]
I have even more than that, I have the all organized in plastic magazine storage unit I got at Walmart, each year in its own container - it’s a stretch for the old days when there were twice as many pages. They’re all lined up on cheapy bookshelves under my layout. Yeah it’s a pain when I move, but I find myself lookign at the older issues all the time. Amazing how much stuff is still useful, even from the 50’s.
–Randy
Same dilemma here. I have MRR for many years and years of older RMC’s, all by year in the Kalmbach hard covers. My current thinking is to get rid of the RMC’s and only keep the number of years of MRR’s that fit in the two bookcases I keep under the layout. That would be maybe the last 20 years.
Every now and then they come in handy for research when looking up an old layout or article or to review a layout. However, time is always the constraint.
Tilden
Every three years? What are we missing here?
Anyway, I have MR from 1963 to now - complete and most back to about 1950
Craftsman almost as complete, plus lots of railroad and model railroad books.
I would never consider getting rid of any of them or “scanning” them into a computer. every aspect of them is a valued resource in my mind.
Move less.
Sheldon
The trick would be to have the spine sheared off of the magazines-- about 1/8 inch or so would be enough, and then drop the whole thing into a scanner with a document feeder that can do double-sided. Many newer “all-in-one” office-type printers can do this. Kinkos can trim the spine if you don’t have an alternate method.
Then it takes awhile, but is not terribly painful and you don’t have to feed single shee
Not just MR but also RMC, Mainline modeler, Trains, TRP and others that you can classify as fallen mags. Why I saved some will come to me later in life maybe. Are all model railroaders pack rats like me? Other stuff gets put in boxes with a date written on the tape to close it. If it has not been opened in a year or two of the date the whole box gets a ride to the dump. Maybe I should use the same system with my mags.
Pete
I only started MRR’ing in 1992 and I have all issues of MRR MAG science then. My wife asked ! Why are you saving all those mags? I say!! I think it would be neat to have our grandchildren & great-grandchildren & great-great grandchildren see how model railroading use to be.
My dad kept every back issue of MR and RMC from when we both started in the Hobby in 1983 till he died in 2008. My mom and I could not keep them for lack of space. They all went away. I have better things to do with my time and living space than collecting dust traps that may have value, but not in proportion to their inconvenience. Kalmbach can get you most anything you want printed up and there may be a club nearby that has a complete set already…and if they don’t, perhaps they’ll want yours. Then you don’t have to store it, and you still have access to it AND it benefits others as well. Personally, I don’t see the value of keeping magazines. My dad was a packrat as he learned to be during the great depression. If your not sure about your magazine collection. Think of your children having to deal with it when you’re gone and see if that’s more or less important than the value of it. Now, If Kalmbach would follow Popular Science’s lead and just put the entire archive online and searchable. Then there would be pretty much zero reason to keep them except pack rat hording.
Yeah, dumping them in the trash along with everything else might strain them a little.
John
It is never that simple. Trust me it isn’t… I’ve never met someone who like me had to sort through a parent’s pack rat life that sees it being as simple as throwing it in the dumpster.
I have just finished moving my collection. MR from 1948 lacking about 6 issues. RMC from 1972 plus several dozen earlier ones. NMRA Bulletin and successors from 1973. About 2/3rds of CTT from its beginning in the 80’s. S Gaugian since 1994. Many issues of Trains, plus several other magazines that I buy off the newstand as they appeal to me. And then there are about 200 books on trains and model railroading. With luck this is the last house and I won’t have to move them again. But if I do, then I’ll move them again.
Enjoy
Paul
Not true.
You are welcome to your opinion as it applies to you - I have been in this hobby for 40 years, and I build models, not just collect trains, so the drawings, how to articles, prototype and model information is all very valuable to me, especially with the magazine index on this site.
I doubt my children will take the time, unless they think there is a dollar attached to it. More likely my wife will call up my train buddies and let them have all the stuff for 20 cents on the dollar - who cares.
Or we could go one step further, and they could just make it an online magazine and be done with it. You may be younger and like all this computer based information storage - I still like old fashioned books.
I paid good money for them, I’ll keep them thank you.
Sheldon
At one time I used to save complete magazines. Then I realized that usually it was only a couple of articles that I was likely to want to refer back to later. I now only save the articles that are of current interest, or potentially in the future, and file them by topic. Now if I want to dig out a published plan or article it is very quickly accessible, and as a result I am using my archive much more. (The only hiccup is the case where two articles I want to retain are on opposite sides of the same sheet.)
John
I am going with the select articles to scan, dump the rest. I tried to find someone interested in the mags that have no articles of interest to me - no takers; so there going to be dumped…
After scanning is done, verified and backed up to a second location, those issues are going to be dumped as well.
Do nothing in haste. Me, I have Model Railroader solid back to 1949 (started subscribing in 1965) wth a few issues pre 1949 (and we aren’t talking here about Trains, Railroad & Railfan, Mainline Modeler, Prototype Modeler, the historical society magazines for Soo Line, Milwaukee Rd and C&NW, and other hobby publications that I have kept).
Believe me I understand the space issues involved.
If I had clipped (or had we had it back then, scanned) the articles that interested me, I’d be in a pickle now. From 1964 to 1995 I was an avid Pennsy modeler. Then I switched to C&NW. I would have tossed an awful lot of incredible CNW material, and would now have little use for the PRR stuff I would have clipped or scanned.
Similarly from 1977 to 1990 I had no house and no layout; no benchwork until 1995. I was mostly assembling, kitbashing, painting, lettering plastic cars and locomotives and wanted only articles on those topics. I had no interest in structures, scenery, wiring, yard design, operations, track, ballast, and the like. I had no house until 1990. Again, I would have tossed so much useful stuff, and kept stuff that I no longer need all that much.
And I did no real scratchbuilding to speak of before 2004. So once again I would have tossed a lot of great articles.
In my opinion, most of my real growth of interest and activity in this hobby came after age 50. I look at older issues of MR that I read thoroughly when they were new and often cannot believe they published an article exactly on point to what I need or want now. I suggest thinking long and hard before tossing any issue or clipping only what is currently of interest.
Dave Nelson
I feel your pain. Ideally, MR would put the archives online and charge a small fee for access it to pay the cost of maintaining it. Alternatively, selling back issues on CD would be fine. Unfortunately, Kalmbach still sees selling back issues and reprints as a money maker. Plus the repackage articles as special books. When I lived in an apartment, I found that getting rid of back issues gave me room for a layout.
Well, that is interesting because to me they have almost as much value now as they did when they were new. I would never spend that much for a magazine if I was just going to throw it away. Actually, now that I think of it even more some of the old ones are worth a whole lot more than the current issues.
I’m still collecting trying to flesh out my collection of MRs back into the 1950s, MRC back through the 1960s, and I think I have almost every RM ever published.
I’ve had to sort through my Grandparent’s “pack rat” life’s worth of stuff. They were, as you mentioned, depression-era folks, and saved literally everything. Newspapers, every magazine ever purchased, bits of string, rubber bands, tin foil, you name it-- if they could squirrel it away somehow in their attic or their basement, it was in there.
Of course they also had some neat stuff too as a consequence. And not for nothing, I remember having a ball growing up reading old newspapers and magazines-- old issues of Reader’s Digest, Life, The New Yorker, Boy’s Life (from when my Dad was a kid)-- etc., they got a ton of magazines and there was a museum’s worth in the basement.
My Dad grew up a product of that environment. And if anything, he took it and improved upon it. Not only has he entirely filled-up a very large and spacious two-car garage floor-to-ceiling (very literally) including every possible nook and cranny, he also has two or three self-storage lockers-- the big kind with the roll-up doors-- he has (at least) three semi-trailers packed full of stuff and parked on a friend’s land out in the country. Its not inconceivable he has yet more junk stashed away someplace.
When I was a kid-- and I’m not making this up-- we’d (our family) would go out for a ride in the country, thinking we were just out for a day’s ride, and we’d be way out in the middle of nowhere and all of a sudden we’d pull up into somebody’s driveway and Dad would hop out and say “I gotta pick up a part, I’ll be right back…” and leave us in the car, engine idling, for 45 minutes to an hour or more while he would disconnect or disassemble whatever it was he needed to get, toss it in the trunk and we’d head home-- so what we thought was just an enjoyable ride, for him was a trip to g