Over on the R&LHS List the topic has come up as to how many of us are Lifetime Subscribers to Trains magazine.
I might ask the same thing of Model Railroader (which discontinued that option before Trains did, I think).
Cheers,
Jim Guthrie
I have over 20 years worth of Trains Magazines and most are complete years. I never considered a life-time subscription and I am sure there are others out there who have a bigger pile of magazines than me.
Well, the first Trains I purchased was in a newsstand in Speculator New York. around 1960. It had a neat article about the KATY – and I turned in enough deposit bottles to subscribe ASAP. And so I have that pile going back 45 years as a subscriber (35 as a Lifetime subscriber – a category not offered in almost as many years).
I have also collected backwards – complete to 1946 and most issues back to Vol 1 #2.
I also have MRs from 1947 until about 1970 (when I decided the 1’=1’ was more my interest; also RMC, Model Trains, the “old” Toy Trains and even HO Monthly in that period. Most of those are in “well read” condition .
I know about a half-dozen other life subscribers, so there has to be a fair number of us.
Most special-interest magazines like Trains would probably note such things as their longest-subscriber and maybe its old lifers in an aniversary issue .
David P. Morgan (and I’m told, Al. Kalmbach before that) used to send a personal note of thanks, BTW.
Maybe Trains at 65 will include such.
In any case, a number for us on the R&LHS list – which has guys with Railroad History collections going back to the 1920s – that’s a pile too! . My guess is either they’re not married or have spouses that have [space-consuming] hobbies of their own.
Cheers,
Jim Guthrie
I have it from a good source that the Lifetime subscribers to Trains will be mentioned in some way in the November issue.
By the way…I’m one of 'em! Got in within a year of the time the curtain fell. That was over 30 years ago.
CS:
Do you remember what the cost for a lifetime versus an annual susscription was at that time?
Richard
Interesting. I never heard of this before. I would like to know what it cost to be a lifetimer.
As I recall, forty years ago it was $60. To bad I didn’t have the good sense to take Kalmbach up on the deal!
I don’t have continous years back in history of TRAINS but I have many, many years of them…The problem is where to keep them…One just does not through away a TRAINS magazine. Have Railroad magazines, some back in the mid 40’s. They sure had some good human interest railroad stories and great drawings in them…One can look in one of them and REALLY see how much railroading has changed.
…I had never heard of the lifetime subscription {TRAINS}, before…I could have been temped with that. What a savings that would have been.
$60 [:O] even after adjusting for inflation that would be a no brainer !!!
While I am not a lifetime subscriber of Trains Magazine, I certainly have a large collection of back issues from the last thirty years. I only wi***hat the publisher of Trains would go back to using the old familiar, traditional masthead. TRAINS splashed diagonally across the front cover just donesn’t cut it with me.
Ray Loftesness II
CANADIANPACIFIC2816
It was up to $75.00 when I scraped that together and took the plunge (rough for a college kid who paid his own way). At the time (I might have been about 20), I figured that I’d have it “paid off” at about 34, compared to the then-current three-year subscription price ($18.00). With a two-year subscription now costing $79.95, I go through another lifetime every 24 months or so.
Modelcar is right, one just does not throw away an issue of TRAINS magazine. I held on to the very first issue I ever purchased (July 1965) even after it was battered beyond belief and threw it out only after I was able to obtain a replacement copy at a swap session.