Tom,Maybe I'm over qualified to answer that simple question since I started reading MR when I was around 7 or 8 or around 60 years ago and I still read it monthly just as soon as it arrives at our local Wal-Mart.
Favorite issue..Ok.. The issue that had "A railroad you can model the Aberdeen & Rockfish" in the early 60s simply because that article started my love for short lines.
There are other issues that's been my long time favorites but,we won't go there.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
Several months ago, Editor Neil Besougloff, in his "From The Editor" column, asked for reader input on what their favorite issue of Model Raolroader was.
I would have to say, without a doubt, it was MR's 60th anniversary issue, January, 1994. It was my favorite for two reasons: 1. I was just getting started into scale model railroading. I had just started collecting track and turnouts, as well as some motive power and rolling stock in the previous year (as well as having been a new subscriber to MR in 1993). I was a sponge; I wanted to know everything there is to know about the hobby. 2. As my screen name implies, I'm an Erie/Erie Lackawanna fan. The article in that issue on Harold Werthwein' s Delaware Division of the Erie struck very close to home for me. I grew up along that same Delaware Division and lived out the latter days of the Erie and on into the Erie's merger with the Delaware Lackawanna & Western. I was out of college and living in Ohio when that article came out. There I rediscovered the EL, as it traversed Ohio and Indiana at it's west end. So, that article was not only loaded with new information for me, but it featured a layout that modeled my favorite railroad.
So I ask, what is your favorite issue of MR?