Model magazines

It makes life tough for those of us modelling from a distance!! Sometimes the errors become obvious when trying to construct the model and sometimes they only serve to confuse!

My latest wagon isn't British, in fact it's prototype is a Wellington Manawatu Railway wagon imported from the USa and integrated into NZR stock in 1909. The drawing I have gives no details of the door locks/bolts and I can't go on general practice because of the unusual origin, nor, given it's age am I likely to find other photos or drawings. While I've made up locking bars that would have done the job, I'm sure someone, someday will tell me they are quite wrong!

Regards, Greg.P. New Zealand.

Or Marsden's "The Diesel Shunter" which retailed at £35.00 and all the drawings in it look like copies from diagrams, and are pretty well useless for any type of modelling. For the price I would have expected some good scale drawings.

I note that the book is now being quite heavily discounted - maybe that's one of the reasons :-)

Jim.

OK so when was the Golden Age of model railway magazines?

I would suggest the late 60s/early 70s when Cyril Freezer was at the Modeller, Roy Dock was at MRN and "Steve" Stevens-Stratten followed Alan Williams at MRC.

The message from MartinS contains these words:

I'm glad that somebody else remembers Billy Bean! All my friends deny any knowledge of the programme or its signature tune - I've shown them the website, but they say they can't remember Billy at all... 8-(

John,

I would agree with that. The only other period might have been the start of MRJ in the 80s when the editor and the original contributors provioded a magazine for scale modellers which plenty of good articles and a lot of arguments as well :-)

In a way, I gauge a magazine by its letters page. If it has a lot of good content and lively arguments, that usually indicates a ggod publication. Certainly, the letters pages in Roy Dock's MR during tghe 70s could prove to be the best read in the magazine in some editions :-)

Jim.

"Tim Christian" wrote

It's more that magazines have quite understandably given up trying to straddle the entire field of model-worthy information. There's just too much specialist stuff out there, much of which is limited if cut down to a general article in a general magazine. (The steam era is possibly better annotated now than it was prior to 1968 - discuss).

I find it interesting, given how some oldsters blister on about some bygone golden age of railway modelling, to look at some of the magazines of the 1940s and 50s. They look endearingly naive now, taking as read a modest availability of tools and materials (RTR and craft products - tea leaves for scenic scatter was still appearing in Ralway Modeller in the late 70s! and it took until the mid-80s until John Ahern's sturdy 1948 book on loco scratchbuilding, last republished in 1975, was superseded by Guy Williams, Iain Rice and others), a satisfaction with "it's good enough" detail standards, and probably a median age of readership of 15. Yes, the full-size steam railway was still in action down the road for the spotter and photographer, but it's striking how much finescale practice (which was beavering away quietly even then) has since come into the mainstream, even for those magazines and editors who stage the odd tactical outburst against "rivet counters" so as not to upset their advertisers. MRJ of course is the dogged exception, the Opus Dei of the modelling faith, burrowing away from within, and having donned the secret hair shirt (though the EM version comes with cashmere-lined cuffs) and taken the Solemn Oath of the Eighteen And Two Secrets, I now buy no other magazine. At least new: anything left in the 20p pile at a show will be filleted for a single article or drawing worth filing.

The archives are now in books, and excellent they are too (advances in colour printing has made them a far better source of detail and texture than was the case thirty or forty years back). See the vast mounds of current titles on display at shows - was much of that around any time before 1980? The modelling spend is now with returners and late adopters, the median age of modellers is probably nearer 50 than 15, and they now require information that's better provided in one book at 15 quid than in 6 or more magazines at

2.50 or more. Prototype and location pictures are more likely to be seen in Steam World, BackTrack and Railway Bylines, especially if you divert off the well-trodden mainstream that the RTR market inevitably has to live on. The upside is a good variety of layouts (though some exhibitions are still pretty conservative in their choice) and never better for the modeller of minor lines and industrial scenes. Kit and detailing choice has never been wider too.

Someone returning to the hobby after a while away will probably find the learning curve steep, but it's worth it in the end.

Tony Clarke, a returner still learning something new every week

I don't know how many years it ran, but I can remember watching it on the neighbours' TV before we got our own in 1954. It was one of my favourites.

In message , Tony Clarke writes

An excellent point - but they are the same people :-) Your 15 year olds of 30+ years ago are now the same people who are around 50, and have returned to the hobby, having bought their houses, raised their families and found some spare cash, at last.

I don't know about Model Rail's budget. In each recent issue there is a listing of the people who "brought you this edition" which seems to be a significant list. The issue in front of me (Dec 2005) lists 6 editorial staff & 3 advertising execs. In addition to this there is a further 16 people described as "The Transport Division Team" who work across Model Rail, Rail, Steam Railway and Coach & Bus Week magazines.

A significant pool of resources I would have thought. Also nothing to stop Model Rail or any other mag asking a club or society to run an eye over their research. These days it ought to be easier to do this electronically. Although of course the number of ex staff who used to work on the railways is rapidly reducing especially steam.

I think the main problem is self induced lack of time, where every magazine wants to be first to do an "upgrade the latest Hornby/Bachmann product in ten easy steps", and never mind the errors.

Kevin Martin

Kevin,

But would any of them have the drafting skills and knowledge to do a good prototype drawing and, probably more to the point, would they have the time necessary to do a good drawing along with their other responsibilities to the various magazines?

The time when I had the correspondence with Model Rail was not long after a fairly acrimonious exchange on this newsgroup about the accuracy of another drawing which had appeared in the magazin, and you could sympathise with an editor wanting to avoid any further such exchanges.

Jim.