I was an earlier subscriber to MRVP and over time I was treated to many series. I delayed in switching over to Trains.com and now that I have I noted that there aren't as many videos available as before. For instance; the Rehab My Railroad was one of my personal favorites with fresh projects each year and new material coming regularly. The last episode of the Jomes Island project that I can find was filmed in early summer. Is this just the effect of COVID on the production schedule or is this series in trouble? Same for "Ask MRVP", "It's My Railroad" and some others. Any info on what's happening behind the scenes?
When Trains.com was first announced and so very heavily promoted on this website and in the pages of MR and Trains, I was a paying subscriber to MRVP and because I was satisfied with the amount of video content I was getting, and because I understood Kalmbach to be saying that nothing would change for MRVP subscribers, there would just be loads more on Trains.com, I held back signing up for Trains.com.
For a while things seemed to be as indicated and I got my "fix" of Cody's Office and Cody's Workshop vids on MRVP, although the growing amount of toy train collector material, some of which struck me as deliberately infantile and creepy, seemed to be coming at the expense of scale model railroading content. Then rather abruptly I'd get messages that the content I was seeking was available to Trains.com subscribers (and implicitly, NOT to mere MRVP subscribers). Since even back then I was reading about less-than- complete satisfaction with the Trains.com experience, I contacted Kalmbach and dropped MRVP, and decided to sit back and let things sort themselves out for Trains.com before adding that. I figured it was just a matter of time.
Slightly off topic: I repeatedly over the years tried to sign up for the All Access pass to get access to the complete archive of old issues of MR (even though I have paper MR solid back to 1949) but every time the person at Kalmbach (or more correctly, the resolutely NON-Kalmbach people down in Florida (friendly but always unhelpful) or Texas (surly and curt but somewhat helpful) or who knows where who pretend to be Kalmbach but are just hired fullfillment center types) interpreted my request to be for MRVP which I already had. At one time I was being dinged double for MRVP. I stopped even asking for the All Access Pass for fear of being triple billed for MRVP.
As for what the problem is, one look at the masthead indicates that the model train part of Kalmbach - actual model railroaders that is -- is now pretty thinly staffed and while there are people on the production end of the video area, it seems David Popp is the one who actually creates content and perhaps was also the one reviewing and editing the external (Leone etc) content creators.
I have no idea what the Trains magazine and Classic Trains magazine subscribers are getting who also signed up for Trains.com, since it was billed as having content for them too. Ditto for garden railroaders and the toy train folks. If it is up to David Popp to supply all of them with content or edit and arrange the content sent in by contractors, well heck, there is only so much one person can do. And I have to think the pandemic has also played a role in the frankly disappointing roll-out of Trains.com
I suppose some fine day I will pony up for Trains.com but at my age it's a race to the finish line between the decision makers at Kalmbach on the one hand, and the Grim Reaper on the other.
Dave Nelson
Well stated brother Dave.
I took advantage of the free trial of trains.com as I would love to peruse the archives of all the magazines. But I was never able to view them on any of my devices. When I clicked on an specific issue, the spinning circle would spin forever.
All I ever got from tech support was "try clearing your cache" which, of course, never worked. Very frustrating.
As a member of MRVP, I'm now wondering if I'm now limited as to the videos I can access.
www.bostontype.com
IF, and it's a big IF, train.com delivered on what it promised; it would be a great deal for those of us content with digital content rather than print copies. However, I'm unable to view an archived magazine with Safari or Firefox without clearing all history and cookies for each download. That's unacceptable given all of the other sites I like to visit. The download load times are horrible - much worse than any other site I visit.
Finally, my biggest complaint is that Toy Trains have priority over scale model railroaders. Just compare the number of layout visits videos. I bet tinplate outnumbers scale 3:1. It's like they only make layout visits to companion articles, and even then, the clip may only be minutes long. They need half hour visits to the many great layouts out there in the YouTube or our forum world.
Ray
OK, I got a free year and found it very hard to navagate but finaly with help from thier real staff I was able to fone my way around but for the site to flurish you should not need help. Now on to the videos, they don't seem to have updated very many of their series and I swear some videos have disapeared that were there before. They have fixed a lot of their links but not all.
Went online for a blow by blow on MR videos, their are 11 under that title (their are a few more not under the series logo like Olympia). Only 6 have videos in 2021, 3 2020. Only "its my railroad is after 7-2021
rrebell OK, I got a free year ...
OK, I got a free year ...
How did you get a free year? Are you able to access the magazine archives?
Pauley rrebell OK, I got a free year ... How did you get a free year? Are you able to access the magazine archives?
And can you access the digital archive easily?
I remember how easy it was to search in the "All Time Archvies" but that feature seems to be gone. I've not become a Trains.com member and plan to let my MR subscription lapse. Pretty sad. Fortunately, I have the NMRA magazine, Model Railroad Hobbiest and Model Railroad Craftsmen.