I was at a train show recently and purchased 26 back issues, at one dime each, of a model railroad magazine that apparently began in 1948 called “HO Monthly” which by 1950 had morphed into “HO Model Trains”. They were in no order of course but the oldest issue I had in my stack was June 1954 and it was still going strong as “HO Model Trains” Just under the magazines title, also in large type on every issue was “Exclusively HO”.
I found roaming through this old mag really fascinating due to the constant editorial and reader complaints of post WWII and then Korean war shortages holding up Mantua’s offerings due to the Zinc and other rationed, shortages, etc. They even deveolped a lot of narrow gauge articles and the early use of HOn3 as its designator. The inside front and rear covers always had really large photo images of a single chosen steamer with full details below.
Now to my question…Any of you really old MRs remember this magazine? I was born in 46 and would have been only 2 when the first issue came out.
Did this magazine, (out of Philadelphia) fold if so when?.. or…Was it absorbed into another publication or did it, again, simply change its name?
HO Monthly (later Model Trains) was purchased by Kalmbach and eventually discontinued after becoming a “yearbook” of sorts for newcomers. The last issue was apparently January 1964.
By the time I started reading Model Trains (1958), it was aimed at beginners (I was one). And, I guess it was HO exclusively–since I was doing HO, I didn’t notice anything strange about that. And do remember that there wasn’t any N. And that scale O was pretty rarified.
Anyway, I really liked the magazine, even after I passed out of beginner status. For one thing, the projects all were pretty easy. So, if you felt like just knocking something out quickly, you might find a good one there–even though you’re now an old hand. Too, they did a lot of pretty good reviews of rolling stock. I’ll mention that some of their beginner articles were pretty advanced, especially for model railroaders of today. I especially remember Westcott’s article on detailing a Bowser/Penn Line 2-10-0. Very nice!
It was a good little mag, and I still miss it.
Another good thing about it was that it took the pressure off of Model Railroader to do all the (usually repetetive) stuff for beginners. So THAT mag could go high class, and be inspiring. And it really was. Thornburgh building a loco from scratch. You know, like making the domes and side rods by hand. Oh, yeah! Now, I was never going to go that far, but I really liked how it kinda set the tone.
Thanks for the replies and especially the years and covers illustrated. Apparently they droped the “Exclusivley HO” from the cover after the Jan 1954 issue when they once again changed cover formats. However, they mentioned HO in the title area and avoided the “Exclusively” part.
The more I read of this little mag, the more fun and homely it becomes. Of course the nostalgia gives it a big boost. The informal and humorous, often non-politically correct writing style would not make it today such as when describing the scratch building of a wooden HOn3 stock car, the author notes that you must grab some the the “missus” least expensive perfume and try and not join the cannine in his abode in doing so. Then he suggests adding a little assifedita to the perfume to create “Corral #6” and rub it into the wood to make the stock car really realistic to all the senses. How many modelers did this, we will never know.
Oddly, I can’t remember the mag even though I was into my own HO layout building by Jan,1958 with my first Varney dockside set (xmas 1957) on a 4X4 piece of plywood that I assembled and scenic’d myself. My dad and I shared his lionel 10X6 layout until that time when I branched out into HO.
My few early magazine memories are only of MR and MRC
This is fun mag and a great trip back into a time when everyone made do with far less than today in model railroading.
The more I read these old 1948-1954 “HO Monthly”/HO Model Trains" mags, the more I learn about the hardships of those post WWII modelers struggling with HO scale components, motive power and rolling stock. We really don’t know how good we have it today! Remember HO was the smallest scale then that was becoming the defacto #1 scale.
One interesting point is that they started a monthly department devoted to HOn3 written by, of course, Slim Gage. A number of their departments were written by made up author’s names. Letters to the editor complained about allowing HOn3 into an exclusively HO scale magazine. The retort was that HOn3 is still HO Scale.
Common, at that time, was the absolute absense of HOn3 locos. Kemtron was making an HOn3 0-4-0T dockside (“Tiny Tim”) in 1950 that was basically a reworked Varney “Little Joe”, but the key sticking point to real HOn3 scale locos was a small enough motor to cram into a scale boiler. By late1950 Lindsay and Major Electronics were offering 7 pole miniature motors that did open up the possibility of future HOn3 loco kits.
HOn3 kit bashers and scratch builders had been forced, prior to this time to make HOn3 high scale locos using the stock, large, standard Pittman HO motor of the period mounted sidways in the tender to drive their high scale efforts via a shaft from tender to the driver gearing in the engine.
Of course, really old HOn3 buffs have always had it tough as their standard gauge HO brethern had hundreds of locos and rolling stock items blossom into the largest single scale MR offering in history. It has only been in the last 10 or more years that HOn3 could be really enjoyed by the strictly R-T-R types.
For all the younger folks here…Next time you are at a train show see if you can pickup a couple of issues of any older postwar 46-52 MR magazines and enjoy the read.
I picked up one of the “yearbook” ones at a RR flea market last year, it was the 1963 one as I recall. I thought overall it was good, had nice articles and illustrations.
The first model RR magazine that I ever subscribed to was ‘Model Trains’. I think I got it through our school’s magazine drive, and a 1-year subscription (6 issues) was $2.00. My first issue was Spring 1960 - it had a picture of a model S.P. 'Daylight" on the cover. The things that I liked most about the magazine were the articles on building structures. Each issue had at least one such article, and I built a number of them out of balsa wood, toilet paper tubes (for coal silos etc) and odds and ends from around the house. A number of the building articles were written by a man named Eugene LaDoux, and what made them especially interesting to me was that they depicted structures from my local Rochester, NY area. The buildings turned out quite nicely and lasted through a number of incarnations of my layout.
Another great feature was the “Railroad You Can Model” feature that was in most issues. The ones I remember offhand dealt with the St. Croix tower area south of St. Paul Minnesota, the Sacramento Northern around Yuba City, California, and the Nevada Northern RR.
There were articles on weathering, project layouts you could build, and “Inspection Pit” articles which contained quite thorough kit reviews. It was a great magazine and I hated to see it go.
I have a number of old time magazine these make for some quite interesting reading
Even though today we would certainly not use some of the materials mentioned for doing some things
This is a point that should be noted.
What I like on some of the articles is just how much these guys had no choice but to make and how they made them…
Either because of cost $5 to $10 way back then could well have been the weekly take home wage or the other reason was because the models we take for granted just plain where not available.
All of the issues I have through 1954 show that “HO Monthly”, then “HO Model Trains” and finally simply, “Model Trains” was published under its own name. Model Trains Publishing, Co. Philadelphia, PA. If Kalmbach bought them it was a good deal later (60’s) and perhaps just to ultimately drop the publication altogether (reduce competition).
All I know is that it was a great all around HO magazine from what I have read and continue to read.
I wonder in its later years, (60’s) if Model Trains opened up to scales other than HO?
If mag size is any indicator, my Narrow Gauge and Shortline Gazette (every other month) is a lot thicker than recent MRs. Not to play off one against the other, of course. Model Railroader is certainly the oldest of all continuously published MR mags with, I guess MRC being next oldest?
Somehow, I think if a gauge or a type of modeling has a large enough following, it can support a magazine unto itself. Unfortunately, magazines may be a mere memory in 10-20 years.