I too have hardcopy MR's from 1944 to present, bound and loose copies with many overlapping years, and the reprint of the first year along with a bound volume of 1937. The reason I was hoping they would re-release an updated version was so I could easily search for tips and articles of interest at my workbench computer that isn't connected to the internet rather than going to one of my other computers, going online to the online magazine index and then to my hardcopy. Worst case scenario is that I keep doing it the way I have been and spend time running back and forth between the workshop and the house whenever I get a wild idea for a project I remember reading about. I currently have FSM, Garden Railways and Narrow Gauge & Short Line Gazette on the workshop computer so I have some access to ideas, shortcuts, tips and techniques when I get the urge to scratchbuild or modify a model.
I am under the impression that the scans used for the 75 year set are the same as those used for the all access pass to the online archive. There are a few scans, such as scale drawings that spread over two or in some cases even three pages (foldout) that did not turn out well, and now and then a scan looks to have been done in haste and OK'd without comparing to the original. Fairly rare.
Ironically I suppose the last few decades see so many fewer scale drawings that it should not be a problem, plus they are no longer scanning paper as they have to do for the older issues. It's already in a computer.
I have hard copy, solid, back to 1949 with isolated prior issues, and the 1934 reprint. It is an interesting progression. The first few years it was rugged individualism and everything was built by the modeler, unless it was modified tinplate, and things held up for praise look pretty rough to our eyes. Things changed by around 1937 when more was available commercially and the standards for what model would get featured in the magazine went up quite a bit.
Then WWII hit and suddenly we were back to rugged individualism, so you'd see articles about removing the brass rail from the last 8 inches of the siding where only the freight cars would go, replace the rail with wood, and now you might have salvaged enough rail to build yourself that badly needed turnout or crossing.
It took a year or two after the War for things to get back to normal and interestingly a bit of a revolution took place in that interim -- the HO side of the hobby moved from 6 volts to 12. That had been discussed in the 1942 to -45 era and while not as big a change as DC to DCC, or three rail to two rail, it was interesting how non controversial making 10 years worth of HO motors obsolete really was.
I elected to acquire hard copy MR back to 1949 because it is about 1950 when many of, and eventually most of, the articles in MR become consistently useful and interesting to the modern day modeler. Among the improvements: scale drawings were in scale feet and inches, not actual measurements for building in one scale and one scale only. So you stopped seeing titles like "Build this gondola in S scale." Before then articles were very scale specific, which fueled the "battles of the scales" that you would read about in letters to the editor.
Any modeler today could follow the Eric Stevens dollar model car or structure articles with benefit of today's materials and more particularly the Paul Larson Swift reefer scratchbuild, a top notch piece of work in any era. By the 1960s you had the Jack Work, Jock Oliphant, E. L. Moore, Al Armitage and Joe Kunzelmann structure articles which are fully usable today because of the standard of their modeling - "no excuses needed."
Maybe the one thing about older issues that is most dated: the track plans. There are a few interesting point to point or switching layouts in older issues, but mostly it was a contest to see who could cram every aspect of the prototype, from roundhouse to yard to "towns" to terminal no matter how small the layout: the most track into the least space while preserving continuous run, with no staging, nothing "beyond the basement" and every car and locomotive on the layout and visible at all times -- and that was regarded as "realistic operations." And even the much praised John Armstrong was doing it that way.
Dave Nelson
I also would like original set.
They aren;lt going to re-release the 75 year set as it was, the embedded reader software is not compatible with newer Mac OSX versions.
I jumped on the new 10 year set, since I have the 75 year set and this brings it all up to date. First thing I did back when I got the 75 year set was start at the first ever issue and read them all, in order. I love seeing the history of the hobby and there are some amazing things people were able to accomplish with nothing like the tools and supplies we have today. And there are plenty of techniques and terminology that still apply today.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Hi trolleyfan,
I bought the 75 year set but I have barely used it. It's not because I found it difficult to work with - I didn't, but reading old MR articles just isn't my thing. I have a Video Plus subscription as well. That I have used several times but only to research very specific topics. Maybe I'm missing out.
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
With the pending release of this DVD-ROM, with 10 years of MR on it, can we assume that there is going to be a re-release of the previous DVD set? How many others would like to see a re-issue of the previous DVD set in an upgraded version? From what I heard about the original set searching was sort of hit and miss and some of the scans weren't the best quality. I would have bought a set but the the problems I had heard about and that you had to download some oddball software because it wasn't in a format that Adobe could use or access so I hesitated, when I decided to bite the bullet, buy it and try to work with it it wasn't available any longer. This brings up another question, is this set going to use a non-standard file type that requires the same oddball software to be downloaded or is it going to be in an Adobe readable PDF format? Any opinions?