Don’t get me wrong, i love Trains mag. I miss the days when the magazine was more geared toward operations and railfanning. I know there are a slew of other mags out there that focus on these things but i think trains did it best.
I hate to be critical but a whole issue on food ? I’m a 30 something too but i don’t care that much about young men and women running steam engines. I enjoyed last months article on the Coors railroad and this month’s regarding the Appalachian.
Can we please bring back Hotspots - perhaps with a post 9/11 bent with hassle free locations?
Perhaps they are doing a bit of searching around to see just what works best for the mag…The article this month depicting operations just before Amtrak looks interesting…Just haven’t got into reading it yet but look forward to it.
I was going to say welcome to the forum, but I see you’ve been on here a while already, so congrats on post #1!!!
It has always seemed that Trains has been searching for that “perfect” mix of content. Anybody remember “Trains & Travel”? It’s always interesting to look at old Trains back issues and see how the magazine has changed. And I’m sure that with each change, some subscribers go away, and some new subscribers sign up.
I agree, it would be nice to see a reappearance of Hot Spots. Things I’ve liked about some of the other RR magazines are the pictures of new or repainted power, and news about transactions, the latter of which Trains has done well recently.
Long my favorite magazine, TRAINS has me rather nervous over the most recent few months, I must admit. I hope they “find themselves” soon. And if they’ve already done so and this hit and miss content is to be the norm,…well, we’ll see.
I too thought the food issue was overkill. Even so, I read it cover to cover as I always do. At 61 years of age, I know my tolerance for change is not as great as it once was. But I really miss TRAINS of 2-5 years ago.
G’day, Y’all,
Morristownerie, it’s great to have a member who only posts when he has something to say. I see some who have been on here since, say, last week and have already gotten five stars.
Re: TRAINS, these recent magazines have told me a lot about railroads I never knew I didn’t know and give a lot of insight about railroads, what they are and what they have been. But then I only read Model Railroader for the years of 1961 until 1996 and started working at The Great Train Store near Atlanta and had the time to peruse the periodicals.
Incidentally, the Classic Trains with the photo feature of the Denver & Rio Grande Western’s last winter under steam was just the way steam pictorals should be, in a duotone. I always get the feeling that steam in color is railranning steam, not revenue service steam. But a duotone brings out soul in just about anything it is used for.
I just pulled all my trains from the late 80’s and early 90’s out of storage, and I do notice quite a bit of difference from then till now. It just seems that the older ones had more interesting and in depth features, while the stuff from today seems to be more fluff. However they still are the best mag out there.
While I am sure that my friend Jim Wrinn won’t like me saying this, (though I did to him in his recent visit to Charlotte) Trains, like so many magazines and newspapers is being written to a lower and lower reading level. Go back and look at all the text in the 1960’s issues. DPM would have whole pages without pictures, just three column text- and there were even “big words” that you might have to look up from time to time. Now we have USA Today, or McNews, and the readership of Trains is following.
But, in light of the GOA report and the ax over Amtrak’s diners and sleepers, I did like the dining issus idea, and all of the issues in the past 31 years that I have subscribed.
I’d like to say that I think Trains is still the #1mag in the business. But I have to agree that say the trains of just 3,4,or 5 years ago where better than what we got now. This is in no way an attack on Jim Wrinn as I feel Trains was headed this way before he took the helm. Most of the readers who read trains don’t ride amtrak and I willing to bet that most of the people who ride amtrak don’t read Trains mag. (Most probley never heard of it !) Most of the people who read trains are railfans, Fans of Steam, or industry insiders and employees of railroads. So we don’t need an entire article on Amtrak food service. I think thats just overkill and thats my [2c][#ditto]
When I was a kid in the 1960s, I really liked David Morgan’s magazine. It was as good as any magazine on any topic anywhere in the world at the time. I stopped getting the magazine more than ten years ago, but decided in the last five years or so that I needed it, because it was the only magazine giving me good coverage of the USA (which is a long way from where I live). The magazine was pretty good with Mark Hemphill in charge, but he left. It isn’t too bad now but I feel it needs more in depth articles. As I said on another thread, there have been two descriptions of UP(Y?) 2005, the “Gen Set Switcher” but neither has even told me the model of diesel engine used. I think I know, but it would be nice to have a reference (somewhere, anywhere!) that tells you the facts. In England (also a long way from home) this might be called an “anorak” request, but not all those seeking technical detail are mindless collectors of facts.
The “Countdown before Amtrak” in the June issue is part love story and I loved every bit of it, even had some suspense like a mystery. and true too. I like human interest and I found the young men and women keeping steam alive well worth reading. I find TRAINS invaluable, must reading as soon as I get it (even giving the daily newspaper, the Jerusalem Post some competition). Mark Hemphill was a great editor and a reluctant but good author, however, I believe TRAINS is still a top-drawer magazine. If I had any advice to give the editors, I would suggest avoiding things that are “cute” and based on today’s popular culture . This kind of thing may please a portion of the readers but will look plain silly both to researchers in the future and people like myseslf who are really too busy to watch popular shows on television or party until drunk (possible exception being on the last run of a great streamliner and stuck in the lounge car without a sleeper space, but hopefully the days of last runs like that are over.). Yes and I second the suggestion earlier to give as much technical information as makes sense in locomotive and car articles. Not only the make of the diesel but the type of generators and traction motors and wheel diameters and brake schedule. This can be a in side-box, not necessarily in the main text. Commutrer passenger equipment? What kind of air-condition? Glazing? (laminated, tinted?) highback or low back seats? Reversable? Carpet or Linolium? Freight cars too. Track ties? clips or spikes? Switches? Number? Movable frogs?
In that vein, you made me recall a picture put in the christmas issue a couple years ago, that was a reprint of a Kalmbach Staff picture, from like 30 years previous. Showing the staffers in a christmas decorum.
Note worthy about that photo was the varying expressions on their faces.
Some were grinning ear to ear, obviously quite caught up in the moment…while others seemd to have a much more gruff expression, looking like they couldn’t believe they were being made to join in the “humbug”…
My personal bet is that I would have found articles written by this later group, much more interesting than those written by the others…
I have been reading Trains on and of since 1986.
What I really miss is the regionals in review. I loved the interviews with the new owner / managers and their ideas about railroading. Today there are so many new shortlines and conglomerates that I have lost track of them.
Just recently I came across a website of one of those new conglomerates and they had something to tell as well.
By the way, theme issues are great but some just missed the mark and there should not be too many of them.
greetings,
Marc Immeker
A lot of railfans know about the added hassles and security in the wake of 9/11, perhaps the writers who submit their stories to Trains are having the same frustration trying to obtain information from the railroads or people who work for them. Many companies, not just railroads, might be uptight in what information is released for public viewing these days.
A previous post mentioned the hot spots that Trains magazine used to cover. I too liked that feature. But, how many hot spots are there? Do you keep covering the same hot spots every few years with an update. Maybe a good idea for a future issue would be to cover all the so called hot spots coast to coast that are open and accessable to the public in some detail - sort-of the travelers guide for railfans.
Back in the '60s it wasn’t just Trains that used to value the written word more than pictures, most magazines were that way. I have old issues of Time and Fortune, for example, where written content dominates. In this era of instant gratification, pictures dominate editorial content. Apparently, magazine editors have taken to heart the old saying “one picture is worth a thousand words”. The onset of digital imaging has greatly accelerated this process.
Take a look at the cover picture on the cover of the May 2006 issue of Trains. Notice how it looks too picture perfect? That is it looks like a model railroad picture. This is because
No haze to give a sense of distance
Using a telephoto lens foreshortens the perspective, exactly what happens when a model train is photographed with a normal lens
The scene has high-contrast lighting, typical of indoor lighting
Small shapes, which give clues to the eye, are obscured by all the titles, and on mine, the mailing label blots out the shrubs in the lower-right. No humans.
The pristine condition of the loco, consist, and trestle work
The feature i miss is the trackside guides. I can always look forward to those no matter the location. I do not subscribe to read about tourist railroads in alaska or mexico. Even the maps of the month arent as interesting! I need at least one story in the magazine to look forward to and these last two issues didnt cut it - I dont know if the next one will either.
BRING BACK THE TRACKSIDE GUIDES!!! Hot spots would work too[:)]
I’ll second that Bring back Trackside Guides and Hot Spots !!! I also agree on the more technical stories and more in depth stories and how things work on a real railroad. One of the best issues I think from just the past few years was the Special Issue on mountain railroading. It was full of in depth stories, facts, and technicals like how air brakes worked when using retainers and diagrams to go with it. One of the best in a long time!!! Give us more like that. Amtrak stories are good but like I said - a whole story on food service? Come on theres got to be something more interesting going on in railroading that could have took that space.