R.R. model magazines (ie: "hard copy")

When I read threads like this, I can't help but wonder if it is the magazine that has changed or have we? There was a time in my modeling "life" that I was thrilled just to be able to change a horn-hook coupler to a Kadee drop-in. When it worked, I was filled with an inner sense of satisfaction. Now, it seems like I can do that blindfolded (or is it that my eyes are getting worse with old age and it just seems like I'm blindfolded??!?).

So, does MR seem less appealing to us because it is no longer challenging because we have grown in our modeling skills? I'm neither defending nor criticizing here; I'm just asking the question. Or... to put it another way, when we all learned to read, those Tom, Dick & Susan books seemed so challenging; now, we laugh at their simplicity. Just my thought; your idea might be totally different.

The other fact of life that MR is dealing with is that there are fewer & fewer "modelers" today. More and more people are content to plunk down $20 for an RTR Athearn boxcar and get on with it. Good gag a maggot... Even Plasticville kits are sold preassembled today! So when people in the hobby are bringing less & less in the way of modeling skills to the table, MR may have rightly guessed that the "modeling" that many of us did 15-20 years ago would be way over the heads of many of today's readers. A friend of mine in the retail end of the hobby told me that his shop recently ditched all of the strip styrene & may other scratch-building supplies because people simply weren't buying them. Who uses decals any more? Times they are a changin' and it could be that MR is trying to change with them. And those of us who liked to do things the "old way" are being left out in the cold.

Like I said, just my thought.......

dlm

Reply to
Dan Merkel
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It is most certainly the nature of MR that has changed, not us. Just compare issues of the magazine from 15-20-25 years ago and more with what they are publishing today. They are totally different in scope and direction.

As to the editor's foresight in this matter, what I think we are seeing is a magazine that is catering to its advertisers, who make much greater profit today by selling RTR vs. kits and who, in turn, are responding mainly to the entry-level crowd who are obviously willing to spend big bucks up front (and which the longtime modelers largely are not).

It is really quite startling to compare MR's ads with those in RMC. MR is largely about buying stuff, particularly RTR. RMC about tried and true modeling and so are its advertisers. You'll quickly note that the magazines represent two very different camps, with very little crossover. As such, I honestly think that we are seeing the beginnings of the hobby's division in to two separate and distinct camps: those that can do and those that are only willing to buy. It will be a division into modelers and collectors. And just such a split in hobbyist recognition also occurred in the 1950's, when tin-platers and hi-railers were expelled from the group which considered themselves as true scale modelers...a movement spurred, incidentally, by MR!

History has a tendency of repeating itself and it looks like MR will likely be on the opposite side of the fence this time.

CNJ999

Reply to
CNJ999

Folks:

I think there's a few more things operating here.

For one thing, take a look at a handful of pictures in, say, a 1958 MR. Practically everybody has some Silver Streak or Ambroid kits. Most are assembled at least adequately, a few really well, a few are really hack-jobs. Now go to a train show and browse the vintage HO (only because I very rarely see old kitbuilt O). Again, there are a few really well-done kits, a few really bad ones, and a lot that are at least adequate.

This, I think, aligns with something I know very well. When a person of average skill, such as I am, encounters an unfamiliar job, he often rushes or otherwise mangles it. But by the next time, or perhaps the third time, he has learned enough to do it reasonably well. I know this to be true for me, because I ruined a yard-sale vintage Revell Popcorn Wagon kit (ow) and perhaps half a dozen other plastic car kits before I gained the patience to sand, paint, remove chrome, and avoid surplus glue. But when I finally got that 1957 Bel Air complete (and painted a two-tone green of extraordinarily disgusting and yet beautiful authenticity) I was just so DAMNED proud of myself. That feeling was worth all the wasted plastic.

With train kits, much the same thing happened. I ruined a Mantua

2-6-2, and to fail to extract a working model from those extremely well-designed kits is really a negative accomplishment, I must say. I then attempted an Arbour 4-6-0 with very dire results that got donated to a local watchmaker. Poor guy. But then I tackled an MDC 2-6-0, which was quite frankly a lot trickier than the 2-6-2, and after a lot of slow and careful work it ran absolutely beautifully. What a charge it was when I put the motorless but otherwise finished chassis on a piece of track, tipped it slightly, and watched the rods lashing as it coasted away!

And again, I still have my second scratchbuilt cardstock house. It's pretty bad, but I kept at it, and the latest one is a lot better. I'm no Rob Corriston yet but I can aspire. :)

SO where am I getting, with all this wordiness? Well, I am trying to say that everybody in those old MRs with their stick-kits and "airplane glue" must have gone through this very same learning curve. First attempts are often disastrous; third are just as often successes, and that first success is all the better when it takes effort. And yet, I keep on reading anecdotes online or in MR that describe how somebody tried something, failed, and never tried again. But in so doing, they never know the thrill it gives to know that your own hands now have the ability to do something they couldn't do before. It's an empowering feeling, and if you can't find the time to seek out that feeling, which is one of the best rewards any hobby can provide, then please, scale back participation in some other part of the hobby so that you can. Better to build a diorama and gain that skill, than try for an empire and lose the opportunity.

Another thing I'd like to mention is that model railroading, though a largish hobby, is often greatly influenced by a very few 'idea- people'. In a previous era, Linn Westcott was a veritable giant, and his focus on the techniques of the hobby was no doubt a huge influence on what modelers of the time thought of their hobby. Frank Ellison, practically on his own, made the way-freight the center of model railroad operations for a while.

Today is no exception. I think we are just leaving the Allen McClelland era of model railroading -- the era of a railroad that is not a "real railroad, only with small trains" like the G & D, but a railroad that doesn't try to be a real one on its own, but an accurately modeled railroad simulation. Tony Koester and John Nehrich are other notable promoters of this style. It's a good style; I like the "real railroad" approach better, but if you want to simulate part of the SP or ACL, the McClelland way definitely seems easier.

I believe that the McClelland era, too, has seen some de-emphasis on model building. In a way, the Allen approach propelled you, through space constraints, into some degree of free-lancing; it's easier to justify the compromises a small railroad must make if it's your own line. Free-lancing encourages customizing and scratchbuilding, simply because nobody is going to build you a G&D 4-10-0. Conversely, when the emphasis is mostly on train operations-simulation (not traffic simulation as in the other approach) and modeling of a prototype or near-prototype, some attention is inevitably drawn away from model building.

I think the McClelland era ended, in a semi-poetic sense, when Koester tore down his Allegheny Midland. The ideas go on, and yet all around there are signs that the themes are changing. I don't know yet what they are changing to, yet.

That's enough running at the mouth for now from me. Over.

Cordially yours: Gerard P. President, a box of track and some grids.

Reply to
pawlowsk002

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