50 + 40 = 90

Left: MR 50th Anniversary, Jan 1984; Right: MR 90th Anniversary, Jan 2024

Sometime in January 1984 I bought a copy of the 50th anniversary issue of Model Railroader - the January 1984 issue of course - at Oceania in Toronto’s Towne and Countrye Square near Steeles and Yonge. I wasn’t doing any model railroading then, but I still had a strong interest, and was looking forward to reading MR’s special issue.

A few days after buying a copy of 50 I had to go on a business trip to the Wright-Patterson AFB to give a presentation on some contract work I had done. I decided to stuff 50 in my checked bag for reading in case I had some free time in the evenings. That didn’t happen and it remained in my bag, unread. It stayed in my checked bag for the return trip too. I had no room in my carry-on bag for 50 as my work documents were given priority.

The flight back home was two hops, and I had to change planes in some northern US airport whose name and location I no longer remember. It was snowing like crazy and every flight was delayed. I stood for a long time at a window in the connecting airport overlooking the tarmac praying the snow would let up. At one point I saw a baggage train outside racing to take a load of luggage from what looked like the plane I landed in to the one I was going to leave in. It took a sharp corner en route and a number of bags tumbled off one of its cars into the snow. I mentioned this to a gate attendant, then my flight was called, and I was off.

I think my precious bag with its precious 50th cargo was one of those bags that fell off as it didn’t arrive back home when I did. I stood at the baggage carousel, waiting and waiting, pondering what had happened to my 50th. Yes, I was upset because my 50th was lost, not my clothes :-) I had crazy priorities back then. And, it was hard to get back issues in those days. The 50th was no longer on local newsstands when I got back home so I thought all was lost. I figured I’d never see another copy. Luckily, two days later the airline found my bag. Crisis averted :-)

So, here I am 40 years later. The 1980s and newsstands are long gone, but my local hobby shop still carries a few hobby specific magazines. This January I saw the 90th anniversary issue of MR there - the January 2024 issue of course - on a shelf. I took a quick flip through and decided not to buy it, or any of the issues so far this 90th anniversary year. 

My enthusiasm for MR has waned considerably from the 70s and 80s and I rarely buy it anymore. But, I changed my mind a little while ago and decided to backtrack and buy a copy of that January 2024 issue. Given some recent events I thought I should get a copy before they're gone. I didn’t know in January that Kalmbach, MR’s legendary creator and publisher, would cease operations this year and sell off MR, along with a number of other titles, to a company called Firecrown. I didn’t know that Ted Gioia would write an interesting SubStack article called The Death of the Magazine that would put MR front and centre in my mind. I did know back issues were a lot easier to buy these days so I did. And I did know I wanted to compare those two important issues of MR.

First, there’s the cover. 50 has one of those fantastic wordless covers I discussed back in 2016. Ok, it isn’t quite a full page wordless cover, but it’s darn close. Compare this to 90: a photo composition seen on many MR covers with a garish summary of the table of contents superimposed. Those old wordless covers are confident and bold. Look, the magazine’s name is Model Railroader so it should be clear about what’s inside. Is detailed explanation on the cover required? And 50’s cover photo makes it clear there’s a celebration inside. 90’s cover seems craven in comparison. It almost begs you to buy it by assuring you there’s model railroad stuff inside that you'll like and even tells you what page to go to if you’re uninformed that a magazine includes a table of contents. 

What an additional 168 pages looks like

Then there’s the painfully obvious: 90 is much thinner than the 50. 100 pages in 2024 versus 268 in 1984. Is that reduction MR’s fault? Maybe not. For a very long time advertising has gone online and left print high and dry all over the magazine landscape. 

But look, even if market conditions force 100 pages on you, you can still make them a great, celebratory 100 pages. It’s quite an accomplishment for a magazine to turn 90 in this era, so why not blow your own horn. However, that wasn’t the approach taken. There’re only two features in 90 that get out the horn: a small editorial, and a call for nominations to a ‘Model Railroading Hall of Fame’. 50 on the other hand had: a full page anniversary editorial, several articles reporting on a full blown 50th anniversary conference held in July 1983 starring many of the leading lights of the day, a multi-page photo essay where the loco on the cover was shot on a celebratory tour of several well known model railroads across the USA, a magnificent double sided, full colour centrefold drawing of the loco’s prototype, a reminiscence by ‘Boomer Pete’, a look at previous editors, as well as a seven full length model railroading articles by many leading authors of the time. 

Maybe I’m being too hard on 90. Isn’t 100 a more important anniversary? Why waste time on 90? Maybe, if all was well in the magazine world, but clearly subsequent events have shown it isn’t. I’d bet discussions for MR’s sale and Kalmbach’s shuttering were well underway when 90 hit the newsstands since these deals take time. 90 could have been a fitting end to the Kalmbach era, and maybe finally to the 20th century model railroading era. That other stalwart of 20th century model railroading, Railroad Model Craftsman, went bust 10 years ago, but was eventually bought and revived by White River Productions and propelled into the 21st century sans Carstens Publishing. So the sale of MR may represent the end of model railroading’s long 20th century.

With all this grousing I’ve been doing about 90 you may think I’m one of those people who think model railroading is dying just because old reliables appear to be no longer what they were, or simply gone. Frankly, I think model railroading’s alive and kicking and reports of its death are premature. It's just that I think it's a shame that the once leading magazine in the field has seemed to be a shadow of its former self for quite awhile even though the hobby appears to be thriving, and that was really brought home with 90.

Even in 50, MR’s editor at the time, Russ Larson, could see the unviability of print magazines on the horizon and made some interesting remarks on how model railroad magazine publishing might evolve in the future:

“There are two reasons why I believe the print medium will eventually become obsolete. The first is economic. The paper, printing, and delivery of a print magazine is between 35 percent and 50 percent of the cost of producing the product. When a means is found to get the information to the consumer more economically, the days of the print medium are numbered.

The second reason is that, compared to television, video games, and computers, the print medium is rather dull. Reading is a great way to convey a lot of information quickly, and those of us who enjoy reading can come up with a lot of positive things to say about reading. I’ve tried to instil a love of reading in my children - but with only limited success. Young people don’t read as well as my generation. A new vehicle for conveying information and entertainment is needed to make magazines and books interesting to young people who are growing up with color tv, computers, and video games.”

50's centrefold

Larson goes on to suggest a number of 1980s style electronic innovations that might bring his prediction to life. There’s no mention of an internet, but he does give this interesting timeline for the roll out of a new style electronic magazine:

“Publishing: 1983 - 2007

- Print medium dominant

- Electronic medium gaining

- Some magazines available in both

Publishing: 2008 - 2033

- Electronic medium becomes dominant

- Print medium becomes obsolete”

As predictions go, this one wasn’t that far fetched and it seems quite prescient. Larson picks 2008 as the pivotal year because he says that’s the year he turns 65, and would retire, so he wanted to ride out his career working in the medium he loved. Little did he know at the time that the inventions that were harbingers of the accelerated demise of magazines were to be released around 2008: the iPhone in June 2007, the Kindle in November 2007, and the iPad in April 2010. 

But it wasn’t these devices alone that ushered in the shift, but these devices combined with the internet. Larson suggested a future magazine device rather like our iPhones and iPads, which would be well suited to handle a new form of magazine that could combine the written word, audio, graphics, animation, and video. However, the means of distribution would be via some sort of plug-in cartridge.  Again, there’s no mention of an internet, or all that might flow from it. Networked, user-to-user communication was the new, unaccounted for thing.

In Larson’s prediction the media was still a one way affair, from publisher to reader. There’s nothing about what the reader might do with the information they were receiving on those electronic devices even though personal computers of the time allowed users to readily manipulate their data and software, or if other publishers might exist if magazines were easy to make and distribute, or if readers might become publishers themselves. When Larson was asked if direct communication between readers in the computerized world might reduce contributions to MR, Larson replied no because magazines would always be needed to provide services that readers can’t do, like edit text and create graphics. Larson concluded his comments by saying the future was bright for publishers if they worked hard meeting the challenges that were on the horizon. He might not have completely predicted the future - who can? - but he apparently was up for the challenge.

Today there appears to be no need for magazines in any form. Today’s reader of model railroading information is very different from yesterday’s. As well as being a reader they can also be a forum poster, commenter, blogger, video watcher, YouTube creator, influencer, manufacturer’s shill, and so on. Those magazine related tasks that Larson suggested, like editing text and creating graphics, as well as sophisticated things like video production, can easily be done without the services of publishers. Gioia suggests what magazines provided was great writers, which in model railroading terms could be translated to mean access to great model railroaders. However, in today’s world Gioia goes on to suggest that even that is no longer necessary given easy access to platforms that allow those writers, or model railroaders, to publish directly to an audience. Given that’s the current situation he asserts all magazines will soon die off. Where all those years ago Larson saw print magazines becoming completely obsolete and being replaced by electronic versions, in today’s world Gioia goes even further and predicts magazines themselves will disappear, probably well before 2033 as Larson speculated.

I have to admit I more-or-less agree with Gioia except for one aspect. An internet-based model railroading magazine could be an aggregator of state-of-the-art information and trends across the world that might be hard to access, or take time to access, on one’s own. They could put the world in world wide web by extending their reach to make their readers aware of what’s going on all over the planet. Most model railway magazines are quite country-specific affairs, and for good reasons, but in internet form there’s no reason they can’t access the world’s best to help their readers benefit from all there is in the wild. However, as much as I’d like to see that development, I think it’s unlikely, and the more business oriented approach of using a magazine as a gateway to introduce and promote non-information products and services provided by the publisher is more likely to continue as the way forward. Will this spell success? I have no idea and will watch along with everyone else to see what happens. 

to be continued …..................…..

[25 Aug 2024 Update: Eric over at Trackside Treasures has an interesting post on this subject that links to and builds on the above posts.]