Carstens Publications, Inc. closed permanently on Friday, August 22, 2014. Carstens Publications, Inc. has been publishing Railroad Model Craftsman and other hobby magazines from its New Jersey offices for more than 50 years.
In an announcement, president Henry Carstens wrote that the current economic climate has placed the company in this position. He thanked readers for their patronage over the years.
With all due respect to MRC, it is not just the current economic climate that has precipitated the close of MRC, but a number of other factors, as well. I will be polite and not mention my list of them, as I was a regular purchaser of MRH over the years and appreciated the content.
Nonetheless, I do not relish the closure of any publication within our hobby- it tends to diminish model railroading in general. My condolences to Carsten’s.[:(]
Cedarwoodron
This has been posted on numerous other forums, so this information really isn’t a secret …
Guys,
A slight bit of additional information. Pretty much everything you’ve
read about the printer change etc is all true, but it doesn’t draw the
complete picture. Allow me to fill in the blanks a little bit.
Any business owner will tell you, it is all about cash flow. You may
have all the sales you can handle, but if you don’t get the money in
the door in a timely and steady manner, you are going to have issues.
And that has been the case at Carstens for some time. We have been on
a “pay to play” deal with our printer for years…We’d send the mag and
the money to print it…then we’d send the money for postage and they’d
mail it. And these were not insignificant dollar amounts.
From 2008 on, as the recession kept going, people kept losing their
jobs or taking work that paid less, our sales diminished also. We had
increases in the book line, primarily due to the On30 and then the
HOn3 Annuals, and our ad revenue stayed pretty steady. But over time,
the cash coming in, and the frequency of it inched downward. Our costs
(payroll, taxes, printing costs, mailing costs etc) kept going up, and
in the case of mailing, significantly so.
When Super Strom Sandy hit, we were out of power for 10 days (no
phones, no computers) and we counted ourselves lucky compared to some
on the east coast. But there was basically a half month that we could
not generate any revenue, and of course many folks on the east coast
couldn’t buy from us if they wanted to because they didn’t have power
or were d
Sigh! And I had just recently re-upped my subscription for another 3 years. Drat!
That"s what happened to me when Mainline Modeler ceased publication.
The combination of events that led to RMC’s demise were a perfect storm, that became impossible to overcome.
Hopefully, someone will pick up both RMC and R&R and continue them even as a quarterly publication.
I also hope someone picks them up. I have subscribed to RMC, MR, and the NMRA Bulletin (in all it’s forms and names) for over 40 years - and still have all the issues of each one.
Paul
They were active in promotion of certain scales that tend to be ignored in favor of the more commercial HO and N. They would publish an annual masgazine dedicated to On30, and last month’s issue had a special section of articles devoted to 1:64 (S-scale). This will be a loss to the model railroading community.
Well, that sucks.
I was afraid this would happen – I just wish it hadn’t happened till my subscription ended next year. Hopefully someone will buy them and start publishing RMC and R&R.
One other thing that hurt them, and that’s affecting periodicals in general, is the internet. People seem to have migrated away from receiving magazines in the mail, and toward getting the same information online. It’s obviously cheaper to publish a magazine online, plus there’s less paper being used, both of which help the bottom line. On the other hand, you can’t easily swat a bug with a PC.
You can if it’s a laptop and you don’t need to use it for anything else anymore…
I have PC’s that I don’t use anymore, but I’d never use them on a bug because they’re just too heavy to swing at Mr. Housefly.
I stopped reading RMC many, many years ago, but would occasionally pick up an issue if there was a story I liked. Its a bit sad though. I recall, not so vividly for a few reasons that will become clear in a moment, that the Feb 1991 issue was the very first model railroad magazine issue I ever received. Little nine year old me had to have minor surgery and my dad picked it up in the hospital gift shop for me to look at while I recovered. Of course, I was OUT OF MY MIND from coming out of the anesthesia and on painkillers and didn’t really look at it.
Somewhere, I still have that tattered magazine. It’s long since lost its cover, which I recall had a Rio Grande diesel on it. I’m not sure I even remember any of the articles.
Mine was the March 1975 issue with the IC Paducah Geep on the cover (for years I pronounce ‘Geep’ with a hard ‘g’). I was about to turn 11 and my mom bought me a subscription for my birthday.
I lost track of RMC over the years. I have to admit I preferred the glitziness of MR over RMC. MR was also a lot thicker back then, so I felt like I was getting more for my money. Now it’s about the same thickness that RMC was.
Steve S
I had already discovered MR, in part because the library carried it and I could check out past issues. My first RMC issue had a John Allen logging scene on the cover, maybe 1970-ish. Then there was his death and the fire soon after. I was struck by how something so great could come to such a quick end. But ain’t this a great hobby, it has two great magazines! Allen appeared in both
Only one now, two if you count narrowgauge, though.[;)]
I tended to find that RMC and MR complemented each other over the years. I had to drop RMC a while back for my own budget reasons, but hoped to reinstate when I could. I do hope the HOn3 Annual survives (there’s an On30 Annual, too) as it’s a quality product in a scale/gauge that’s been particularly hot the last decade.
I don’t know if Kalmbach has considered a purchase of any of the Carstens assets or not? I could see RMC fitting into a niche of more advanced, hands on modelers than MR often addresses. Slotted as a bi-monthly in the months when the NG&SL Gazette doesn’t publish, it might stir new sales without cannablizing the other publications.
"… don’t know if Kalmbach has considered a purchase of any of the Carstens assets or not? I could see RMC fitting into a niche of more advanced, hands on modelers than MR often addresses."
It would be pure conjecture to assume that Kalmbach is a player, but that would feel kinda like interleague play in baseball, IMHO.
Kevin Blair
Chanute, KS
My first issue was the June 1964, which got lost a couple of years later. Still have the July 1964 issue which I had my parents buy for me when we were on acation in Montana. RMC did have somewhat of a different flavor than MR and it saddens me to hear of its demise.
Sad news. I, too, always viewed MR and RMC as complimentary, not competing.
My first issue of RMC was January, 1960. I was 14 years old and in the hospital with a broken leg, and my parents brought it to me. On the cover was a John Allen shot of V&T 4-4-0 no. 11, the Reno, emerging from a tunnel.
MR has been the big kid on the block for many, many years. Under Hal Carstens, RMC was an also-ran until Tony Koester became editor and made it a contender. When Tony left RMC, Bill Schaumberg took over and continued to produce a high-quality magazine. MR has always had a much larger advertising base than RMC. The folks at Kalmbach aren’t dumb, so they make their magazine friendly to advertisers by keeping their products highly visible, and that keeps the ad revenue coming in.
RMC liked to keep its advertisers happy too, of course; but many RMC articles had little or no value to advertisers. An example was Keith Wills’ monthly column on models of the past. Reading the column was a delight; but everything Keith talked about was long out of production, so the column didn’t encourage sales of current advertisers’ products. Learning about that stuff didn’t help the advertisers, so they may have felt little enthusiasm for advertising in RMC.
Ted Culotta’s long-running series on freight car modeling generally focused on smaller kit manufacturers and the use of small parts that had a limited market. Many people read those articles with admiration; but a big advertiser like Athearn or Walthers might look at those articles and realize there was nothing there to encourage purchase of their kits.
The recent series on rail-served industries was another very valuable contribution to the hobby; but these, again, were articles that didn’t necessarily encourage purchase of advertisers’ products. In fact, they may have encouraged more scratchbuilding, which adds little to most advertisers’ bottom line.
MR has a valued place in our hobb
Bayfield Transfer … That is how I feel.
We should remember the NMRA produces a worthwhile magazine too.
I think it would have made more sense for Carstens Publoishing to sell the magazines they publish as going concern businesses instead of simply shutting down the company.
Of course, MR has always been the best.
This is truly unfortunate for the hobby. As many above have noted, I found that RMC was a good compliment to MR. And for us Canadians, I found they tended to have more articles that related to Canadian railways than I was expecting. They will be missed.
Yeah, this magazine almost ended my first marriage in 1962 which at the time was a day old. We got married on a weekend pass from the army. On the way to our honeymoon lodge we stopped at a convience store for some sundries and there on the newstand was RMC with a cover photo of John Allen’s masterpice layout. I had by then at age 23 put model trains as a distant memory as our pike was really my dad’s…but this thing!!! I purchased the magazine and even tried to peek at the photos while driving. At the lodge which was on a beautiful beachfront, my bride donned her tiny bikini and off she went to enjoy what sun was left. Me??? Off to the crapper and locking myself in for hours read and then re-read this wonderful article and enjoying the photos. I was hooked, and for the rest of the short weekend, all I could think about was this magazine and Allen’s pike. I’ve been a fan of RMC ever since never missing an issue, and I’ll most definitely miss it. My choochooholism affliction is traced back to that very day.
Also of note, I’m a great fan of MR also never missing an issue since 1962. Many may know that I was the co-founder of the Great Scale Model train show and we for years placed large display ads in both magazines. MR’s circulation was three times that of RMC, but still our attendee surveys showed just as many saw ads equally in both magazines. I 've been published several times in both magazines. RMC never changed a word expect for a few typos. MR?? After my last submission in 2003, I got a call the day after the mag hit the stands…Jeez, Zane…Just read your article! I thought you at least finished high school. Oh well! thanks to Carsten’s staff for decades of enjoyable reading and I sure hope somehow it will find a way to continue.
HZ
HZ