Saying the following may irk some, but TRAINS Magazine has NOT had a subscription price increase for years and years and years. Plus, the number of subscribers to the magazine keeps dwindling. Math-wise, THIS CANNOT KEEP HAPPENING! And, this website is now showing signs of deterioration in its upkeep.
What do you think guys? Should TRAINS Magazine instigate a more than modest increase in its subscription price? The owners and staff deserve to be rewarded for their hard work, maybe even adding to the staff so staffers are not overworked!
Such a price increase would be like the Colton Flyover (above photo), where the UP Sunset Route since 2013 flies over the BNSF Transcon at Colton, CA. Things are now very fluid there.
One colleague here in the office stopped subscribing because of poor and unreasonable photo submission policies. It appears such policies are to avoid fraud, and in my opinion the staff is too overworked and unfamiliar with the land they cover to recognize the rare fraudulent photo submission. That is another aspect of the “Spiral Down to Oblivion Magazine.”
Trains is the one magazine I still buy on a regular basis, about 6 a year for the last several years. About half live on my kindle. A good source of rail news is worth the cost to me, and I suspect many others. More than a price increase you need to get the many on line hobiests to buy a download. There is a shocking number of model and train centric groups on Facebook. There are also such areas on YouTube. It is a marketing opportunity that even this old accountant can see.
You may also need to work on your online packaging. Receiving a PDF is the current gold standard.
I’ve been reading Trains since 1973. The magazine was good then, and its good now. Some changes over the years: articles used to be longer and more in depth… that’s likely because 40 years ago people read more and perhaps had more time to sit down and read an entire article containing tons of detail, compound sentences, and words containing more than two syllables. Today the articles are still good albeit more abbreviated, with shorter sentences and smaller words, much more in keeping with newspaper journalism and the shorter attention spans of people today. . Of course, the photography and general layout of the magazine is much better today, thanks largely to advances in technology. Obviously alot of changes over the years, but I haven’t noticed any deterioration. Keep in mind we long time readers have changed too… in 1973 I was an 11 year old kid with an interest in locomotives and rolling stock. Today I’m more interested in the business side of railroading…I would be hard pressed to correctly identify some of the newer motive power. Like the magazine, we’ve also evolved and changed with the times.
Ulrich has a valid point. The audience has changed, and their attention span is much shorter than it used to be. Today’s youth are more interested in texting their friends when across the table from them at Mickey D’s than they are about reading a magazine.
Posted by Ulrich on Thursday, April 20, 2017 4:26 PM
I’ve been reading Trains since 1973. The magazine was good then, and its good now. Some changes over the years: articles used to be longer and more in depth… that’s likely because 40 years ago people read more and perhaps had more time to sit down and read an entire article containing tons of detail, compound sentences, and words containing more than two syllables. Today the articles are still good albeit more abbreviated, with shorter sentences and smaller words, much more in keeping with newspaper journalism and the shorter attention spans of people today. . Of course, the photography and general layout of the magazine is much better today, thanks largely to advances in technology. Obviously alot of changes over the years, but I haven’t noticed any deterioration. Keep in mind we long time readers have changed too… in 1973 I was an 11 year old kid with an interest in locomotives and rolling stock. Today I’m more interested in the business side of railroading…I would be hard pressed to correctly identify some of the newer motive power. Like the magazine, we’ve also evolved and changed with the times.
[tup][tup] Absolutely, what Both Norm and Ulrich said![bow][bow]
My experiences with the Magazine(s) date to about 1954 when my Dad gave me an American Flyer train and layout for Christmas. He provided me with a copy of Model Railroader
Over the years I have stopped subscribing to a number of magazines when the advertising content exceeded the editorial and program content. Ads pay the bills but should not squeeze out what people are buying the magazine for in the first place.
Secondly, when ‘publications’ go to e-zine form they become out of my sight and out of my mind.
I have subscribed to Trains off and on since 1964. However, several years ago I gave up my subscription.
If an issue has more than one article of interest, I will download it onto my Nook. Too often, however, Trains only has one article or sometimes none that are of interest to me.
Trains needs to rethink how it delivers content to its readers. I have suggested that it allow potential readers to buy only the articles - digital form - that they want to read as opposed to buying the whole magazine. Needless to say my suggestion has not been adopted.
One thing is clear. The world is changing. If the editors of Trains don’t think outside of the box, they may lose their box. It has happened to many publications. And it can happen to Trains.
I’ve been a subscriber since 1970 and have watched the magazine ebb and flow a bit, though it hasn’t dropped off the way that some other magazines have since then (e.g. Popular Science). I do miss the multi-part in-depth articles, one of the things that got me hooked on “Trains” was the third intsallation of “Consolidations, Inc” in the June 1967 issue, the first one I picked up.
The ultimate in magazine death spirals was for computer rags, remember seeing Bye going from 100 or so pages to 700 pages and closing shop in a bit over 20 years.
Been a subscriber since 1971. What has disappointed me over the years has been the cannibalization of the historical articles into a competing Kalmbach publication, Classic Trains. I think the CT made Trains a much weaker publication by taking away most of the history and personal stories of past railroaders, not to mention the 8th grade reading level text etc., as mentioned above.
Easy there Tiger!..the Classic Trains forum is by far a more informative, philosophical, fun and interesting site than all the silly meaningless back and forth banter found on the Trains Forum.
Here and there there are some good contributions, however, a lot of it is nonsense.
Both Trains and Classic Trains magazines are well produced and have not lost a step over the years.
Don’t mind the ads at all…they are all railroad anyway and informative in themselves and keeps the cost of the subscriptions down.
I’m a pretty classic guy myself, same age as the T1’s. Drive '69 Malibu, '73 Vette and an '82 Vette.
Do not teach or read at a grade 8 level…at least not yet.
