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Boy there, aardvark, this topic had a mind all of its own, didn't it?  I posted to the subject twice in the first forty-eight hours and then followed it for a few days and then it disappeared; I figured it had gone to that Valhalla of dead posts; I've been wandering around in the Layout and Layout Design section for the last few weeks monitoring a topic I put up there for discussion and I just came back here to this General Disussion section late yesterday, and, wah-lah, guess what I discover.  Seems it went from 24 June to 28 July and then was resurrected by PSi.  Well, I have another two cents worth to weigh in with!!!! Just before the forum was taken down on the 10th I responded to a post from a guy looking for an article from the August, 1954 MR;  I just happened to have that specific volume handy at that particular moment  - I had acquired it in the Silent Auction at Seattle two years ago - and so I took a day or two to browse through these back issues - they are, remember, over fifty years old and their very age lends them a certain fascination - I just kind of wanted to familiarize myself with those good old days of yesteryear - no, I don't go back to 1954; I got in the hobby in 1962 - and, I suppose, there was a hidden desire to tap roots with the world as it existed when I was in my early twenties. And as I browsed I thought about the discussion your posted topic had generated about the merits/demerits of retaining back issues of this, or any hobby's, periodicals and I suddenly realized just why I have 47 continuous years of both MR and RMC and other full years before that;  they are invaluable as research tools. Example: In 1954 steam may have been dying but, as Kalmbach's recently published Diesel Victory outlined, in 1954 you could probably have counted on the fingers of two hands the number of railroads in this country which no longer maintained any steam locomotives at all on their rosters.  And even those that did were most likely going to have their steam servicing facilities intact - or nearly intact, anyway.  In 1954 Model Railroader was running a series titled Model Railroader's Special Handbook Series.  The August issue dealt with Engine Servicing Facilities.  In 1954 guess what an Engine Servicing Facilties was?  The author of this particular article, a Mr. John Armstrong, didn't have too awfully much to say about them thar newfangled Infernal Combustion machines - there was something almost sinister in standardization.  There have been, admittedly, several publications of late dealing with steam locomotive servicing facilities, but if your prime interest is the steam locomotive then these magazines from this, what we today refer to as the "transition" era, can be - and are - of immeasurable value. Santa Fe fan??? I'm sure that Uncle John's Historical Society has published plans for the M190, Santa Fe's famous articulated gas-electric.  There it is on page 38 of that same issue and I cannot recall having seen any drawings of that specific unit in the intervening years. O-Scale was alive and well and still kicking strongly in those days and there were numerous articles devoted to modeling in that particular scale - in fact it was an O-Scale article which brougt this particular volume of back-issues off of the shelf in the first place; N-Scale?  Ain't no such animal; HO-Scalers had to level their derision upon TT which had gained a substantial following since its inception but eight years before but was already beginning to show signs of its demise; in ten years it would be practically dead and the hobby press would begin to pick up on this new 1:160 phenomenon being imported from across the Atlantic.  S-Scale was getting about as much attention then as it does now. Don't know about you but I have decided to hang onto my back issues.  They are much too valuable to get rid of.
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