MR track plans

Newbies. People like me who a year ago decided it would be fun to build a model RR.

Over the past year I've come to see how they remarket their articles as books. And why not? There is virtually no competition. In fairness I've learned a lot from these books even with all their flaws. Yet, I wouldn;t be surprised to see them offer a book on a rat's rump if they thought they could get a return on their meager investment.

All print media are currently struggling to survive in a world where publishing/delivery costs have gone through the proverbial roof and readership has severely dropped off. Some of this is due to the amount of stuff becoming available on line, but there's also the fact that more and more people -particularly younger people- are simply getting out of the habit of reading hard-copy books and magazines.

Rising production costs coupled with lower readership numbers mean higher prices for those of us who still like the old-fashioned paper copies, and there's simply no way around it; rants notwithstanding.

Were the publishers getting rich as a result of these high prices the rants would have some justification, but the fact is that they're just holding on by their fingernails, and many small publishing houses such as Carstens and Kalmbach have already gone under.

Welcome to the future.

I think you missed my point. I considered the price "high" only because of the quantity of errors I found. If those had been found and fixed (i.e. by proofreaders) the book would have been useful to inexperienced modelers. Also to others who haven't saved track plans for decades :-).

As George Allen used to say- The future is now.

I think you missed my point. It costs money to employ quality proof readers.

Money that the small publishers no longer have to spare.

I think you missed my point. It costs money to employ quality proof readers.

Money that the small publishers no longer have to spare.

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Do you read any none American hobby magazines? You should.

MR claims it is the world's largest model railroad magazine yet the UK "Railway Modeller" has, on average, twice or more pages of articles, has more in-depth articles, doesn't try and force you into becoming a subscriber by limiting additional article content to subscriber only web pages and doesn't issue "special editions" in order to maximise profit as MR does with "Great Model Railroads" and it's other annuals. Railway Modeller is also book bound and not stapled like MR, has all advertising in the front and rear with none in the middle of articles making it easier and cheaper to have bound as you can remove the advertising pages. And costs slightly less.

I've also seen Japanese model railroad magazines that are similar in size and content to "Railway Modeller", that have more article pages than MR and more in depth articles.

I don't have the book but have perused it at the LHS. The plan with the missing legend was, IIRC, an urban layout with a continuous run under one end. The original article had all the HO kits for the buildings listed. They grabbed the plan and threw out the article. A lot of their 'books' do this and in some cases the 'chapters' refer you to pages which make no sense contextually.

Thinking back to '101 Track Plans', I believe Westcott was doing the same thing way back then.

All print media are currently struggling to survive in a world where publishing/delivery costs have gone through the proverbial roof and readership has severely dropped off. Some of this is due to the amount of stuff becoming available on line, but there's also the fact that more and more people -particularly younger people- are simply getting out of the habit of reading hard-copy books and magazines.

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I read a lot of stuff online. I think Model Railroad Hobbyist, which is only available online and is Free, is one of the best model railroad magazines published,

. I read it regularly. I also Subscribe to and read the online edition of 'Coral' magazine. I would like to see many more magazines offer digital editions at a reduced subscription rate to account for savings in postage, paper and other cost savings. I also buy single digital issues of some magazines when I want a specific issue but do not want to subscribe - 'National Geographic', for example.

What got me going digital was the book 'Swarm'. I was trying to read the hard bound edition in bed and holding all 1400 or so pages was getting tiresome. Looked around and bought a Sony reader and the digital edition of Swarm. I now have more than five dozen or so books plus magazines, individual articles on PC, the Sony reader and a Barnes & Noble reader I got dirt cheap and hacked into an Android device that also gives me wi-fi. Then there are the tens of thousands of FREE books through Google ...

Take a look at Zinio for some examples of online magazines.

I think your memory is like mine - elusive :-).

I just went through Linn's book and did not find any plan with structures labeled or numbered. So of course I found no legends :-).

What I did see was a lot more text and sepia backgrounds suggesting possible scenery and structures which I think Lynn added to the bare track plans. All good. I did see quite a few "bowl of spaghetti" plans, but those were popular back then.

BTW, I keep swearing I'm going to build plan 47 "Cerro Azul" although I'll probably bend the "U" the other way and add a backdrop down the middle. So far I've not gotten a round tuit.

No, no, I meant he recycled a bunch of stuff from old MRs.

One of my favorite all time layouts was in the hobby shop in downtown Toledo, Ohio around 1953 or so. A regular rabbit warren! You never knew where a train was going to pop up once it plunged into yet another tunnel. The 'museum' layout he includes in that book was in the museum building at the Toledo Zoo. You watched all the action from a balcony.

I always liked that one. My thought was to jack up the north end a bit so that I could have a lower level continuous run.

In "Track Planning for Realistic Operation", Page 81, John Armstrong does exactly that. He even shows staging tracks.

Thanks. I'll check the library for that.

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Nice resource - thanks for the link.

Huh????? Carstens and Kalmbach are still here, last I looked.

But you're right about commercial printing/publishing. You'll note that from time to time people come here asking for on-line resources, when a trip to the local library would have answered their questions before they even asked them.

Wolf K.

And I think you've forgotten the fact that proofreaders have gone the way of the dodo, because after all, we have spellcheckers now, right?

Wolf K.

All true, but the economics are different in the UK. For one thing, the advertisers can afford regular, highly-detailed ads (mini-catalogues really) which pay for the mag, because the deep discounting that rages here hasn't quite caught on there. And becsaue the Roytal Mail still subsidises magazine mail, the subscriptions are enough to cover the clerical costs of maintenance the list, which is not the case here. (The costs of maintaining a list are rather more than the uninitiated imagine.)

Also, the articles in Railway Modeller are written almost entirely by contributors, not staff. They tend to be written to a formula, which gets pretty boring. I mean, after you've read the 33rd list of locomotives, you wonder why you bother. I rarely read the articles any more, the pictures tell the story. I suspect that the contributors don't get much pay.

Wolf K.

Interesting concept - but, our library has zero resources regarding model railroading - I've looked.

We also have grammar checkers which, apparently, are seldom used.

To those people, who I consider too lazy too do their own research, I'd like to send these links: -

Or if they are really lazy: -