Saving magazines

Dumb question:

Is there a DVD-ROM magazine service for MR and RMC somewhere?? Kalmbach doesn't seem to have one for MR. And even though Kalmbach wants to sell off paper mags (do they keep all the film when all issues are gone?), I would think they could make nice money to all those railroaders with no space for mag. stacks. True, not everyone has a DVD drive in their computer yet.

I would dearly love to have some of the MR's and old Trains mags from the 60's and 70's with those terrific articles. Yes, I could buy someone's collection from an estate. But what quality? Missing issues?

And if Kalmbach won't do it, why won't they license a 3rd party to scan them in for a nice royalty? It would be sort of free money for Kalmbach. I think I'd actually pay more for several complete DVD's than a stack of moldy, dogeared mags.

Larry

17jan05

Jim McLaughl>

Here it is: Model Train Magazine Index

Besides the fact that they could put copy-protection on the didks if needed... how would the fear of unauthorized copying affect their decision-- since it's back-issues that we're dealing with anyway, it's not like it would affect current sales.

Probably because no third party will do it for a "nice royalty." It's not a big enough market (at this time).

In article snipped-for-privacy@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com, snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com at snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com wrote on 1/18/05 1:58:

I agree; my friend has also saved selections from MR, epecially those earlier issues he bought here and there, that cover a variety of topics, such as letters to the editor, columns, etc., and has passed copies on to me.

I dunno...it could've been stacks and stacks of old newspaper. Heck, the board of health would declare that a health hazard, and the fire inspector, a fire hazard.

That would certainly be interesting; you preserve the issue showing the month and year your child was born, you got married, etc.

A good idea, but what if their space is aleady limited?

I suppose it would be a good idea.

Inconvenience? Depending on one's family, such a collection might simply be tied into bundles and placed curbside, too. :-)

Dieter Zakas

In article snipped-for-privacy@110.net, ldc at snipped-for-privacy@110.net wrote on 1/18/05

2:02:

Don't you mean CD-ROMs?

Nevertheless, it probably would be a good idea - up to a point. Technology today allows us to search such databases to extract the desired information. Where magazines are concerned, it would be helpful in our case - you want to look up all the depot styles of the XY&Z Railroad and perhaps build one from scratch.

It's actually easier to do that with magazines published in the last 15 to

20 years, as their layout and design has been done on computer, so it's just a matter of importing the data. For older issues, however, there is the challenge of locating pristine or nearly-pristine copies, scanning them, and indexing them for the CD. Given that MR has over seven decades behind it, you're talking no small undertaking!

Dieter Zakas

I have the one I bought on my honeymoon, RMC 1/1992. I think it has the something on a C&NW SD18 on it, so whatever the reason, it's a keeper.

Jay

website URL: members.aol.com/orphantrainlocos/index.html All the world's a stage - and everybody's a critic.

And what did the marriage counselor say about THAT?

snipped-for-privacy@aol.com (Djefam) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mb-m28.aol.com:

Fujitsu makes a great little scanner that would be ideal for this. It scans a whole stack of pages directly to a PDF file. And it is a duplex scanner, grabbing both sides of a page at one pass. It's fast, too. About 25 pages per minute. We use one at one of our branch offices. If I recall correctly, it was about $400 including the software. We bought it from Tiger Direct.

Let's see, a room full of magazines and a dead body - maybe we can work out a package deal with the crematorium. :-)

Because of job and family commitments, I was an armchair modeler for many years. My magazines were my modeling tools. I'm fortunate enough to have a wife that put up with boxes of "musty old magazines" on moves all over the country and now that I have room to store them I've filled in many missing issues and love rereading the old mags.

George

I assume you are indexing Obscure German Railways Quarterly, and not some of the more mainstream mags as done at

?

Perhaps, before you get too far, you could consult with the Kalmbach indexer, and save the results in thier format? Then you could share your effort with or hobbyists around the world...

CL

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 20:52:25 -0500, "George"

Besides, it's not your problem, you're dead!

Actually, you made a clear point, and it's important. We should all enjoy what we have collected,but before our final run we should take some time to leave a written idea of how to dispose of our "assets" with a guide as to where certain things will go, and what might be valuable and what might not....

A good reason to bring younger folks into the hobby - so our heirs can sell them all of our flotsam...

CL

Ha! We rode a train on our honeymoon night, but I sure as hell didn't buy any magazines...

CL

Ja!

That's a good point.

errr - I have more trains than magazines!!!

I have a friend who lives nearby in a neighboring town who does just that. You'd have to see it to believe it.

It didn't stop National Geographic and Mad from putting their old issues out on CD. Of course, there's one area in which I would like the model RR mags to go a step further than simply scanning the old issues - make all of the plans that have been published available in a scalable format so they can be printed out full size for whichever scale a modeler is working in. I don't know if Acrobat can do this. Postscript is scalable and so is another format sometimes used by printers called Tex.

What size is the bed? For years I've wanted to be able to scan and convert electrical schematics at work to Acrobat files. Many, many schematics are printed in 11" x 17" size.