I see that the magazine will be running an N scale article every other month. i would like to suggest that they pair that with an On30 article every other month. This seems to be the fastest growing scale at this time.& a fertile field for new material…jerry
…except they’d have to call it the “On2-1/2 Forum” since Kalmbach refuses to use “On30” like everyone else does.
[;)]
Indeed. I have never understood their stubborn attitude in all of this. On30 is the most common name used, yet they refuse to use that term.
I think an S scale column would be better. It could start off with a series on converting Bachmann On30 to S. [:)]
Enjoy
Paul
I would love to see a bit more emphasis on On30, not only in the magazine, but also in the forums. Are we On30ers considered scale RRers, or are we tied to the O scale High/3 Railers? Sometimes it gets a bit frustrating.
Kevin
Kevin,
I have been buying MR since the 1950s either by subscription or the LHS and have noticed that since all of the “old heads” have either retired or died now we have a new crop of boy geneius’ that are out to reinvent the wheel and take MR in a totally new direction. As best as I can see it is becoming more of a “plug n play” magazine for the new crowd. You hardly ever see any real “craftsman” articles anymore and “On30” as with all narrow gauge modelers are more of a craftsman than the PnP group ever thought of being. So you probably “won’t” see it get much exposure here now or in the future.
We used to have the “Narrow Gauge Gazette” but I don’t know if they are still operating or not and not doing any narrow gauge I haven’t checked.
RMC doesn’t do much with narrow gauge either but at least they are more oriented to the “craftsman” than MR is, you might want to check them out sometime.
My subscription runs out with the March issue so I will be doing the “check it out at the newstand to see if there is anything that interests me” before I flip the bucks for endless pages of advertising and PnP articles.
Mark
I would agree about the craftsman articles - thye used to dominate. But I don’t think there is much less narrow gauge coverage than there used to be in Model Railroader. Narrow gauge has its fad periods, then it fades, and then comes back again. The layout planning books never fail to have at least a few narrow gauge plans (1/2 of which are On30/On3), so I would disagree with narrow gauge being forgotten.
Also missing in recent years are articles on operations and electronics - both of which used to be MR staples, in addition to the craftsman articles.
Short Line and Narrow Gauge Gazette is still in active publication - and is a great magazine. It features far more narrow gauge than standard gauge short line material.
Carstens (publisher of RMC) publishes Narrow Gauge Annuals for both On30 and HOn3. Also very worthwhile.
Fred W
I don’t know if you’re on it, but Railroad Line Forums is an excellent site with tons of On30 modeling on it.