RudyRockvilleMDI logged on to Railfan & Railroad's web site last Friday, August 22nd, and I found out that Carstens Publications would cease operations at the close of business on August 22nd. Nevertheless it is still trying to sell its three publications.
There was a note in the Newswire recently detailing their ceasing of Operations...
Since Hal Carstens passed, the quality seems to have declined, and the format gotten stale IMHO... Used to buy Railroad Model Craftsman right along with Model Railroader. Read them both cover to cover, Since my eyesight precluded the fine work needed to do modeling, TRAINS is my main go-top publication. Must be a sign of the times, print pubs are suffering badly....
We need to keep close watch on all RR related publications.
1. Quality of writing & photos.
2. Quality of paper for the publication.
3. Space for ads compared to articles.
4. Number of pages reducing in any periodical.
RudyRockvilleMDNevertheless it is still trying to sell its three publications.
Not in the sense that the Web site still seems to be 'taking orders'! There are several potential companies that want to continue producing the printed magazines (Railfan and Railroad, RMC, and Flying Models). At least two people from Carstens are still actively developing content for future issues.
I'm surprised this is the first mention of the Carstens closing on here. I know R&R is 'the competition' but the passing of 'the Colonel's' company deserved better mention.
I too saw the shocking announcement in the "Newswire" as well. I wasn't a constant reader of "Railfan and Railroad" magazine, I usually purchased a copy only when there was something in there that interested me, but even so I was good for at least nine to ten copies a year. I always found the issues I bought interesting and can't say I found any decrease in quality at all.
As far as rail print publications suffering from what I can see "Trains" is doing OK, so is "Railpace" and "The Railroad Press." "Classic Toy Trains" and "O Gauge Railroading" seem to be strong as well. Maybe Mr. Carstens the Younger wasn't the businessman his father was? Who knows?
The thing is, there's an ominous trend going on in the hobby world, and not just in the railfan world. A LOT of the hobby world seems to be having troubles attracting new blood. One of my brothers-in-law is a car guy, and he's seen his favorite car modeling magazine drop from twelve issues a year to seven. I was reading one of his muscle car mags and one of the columnists was sounding a warning that interest in muscle cars seemed to be dropping precipitously in the rising generation of young men. A good friend is heavily involved with Ducks Unlimited, the conservation group, and they're having trouble attracting the young. Traditional outdoor sports like hunting and fishing are seeing declining interest.
What's going on? Is it the fact a lot of the young aren't interested in anything that doesn't involve a computer, a tablet, or an I-pad? Are they not interested in working with their hands anymore? Is it the fact we're two generations into a group that never held a flashlight for their father while he fixed the car, or the plumbing, or anything? I don't know. I don't pretend to know. I do know the current crop of electronic gadgets are seductive, just as seductive as any drug. Look around you and see just how many people walk around with their eyes glued to their electronics, oblivious to everything else, and are totally lost when those electronics break down.
Maybe the world's changing. If it is, I'm not sure it's for the better. What's the answer? I'm not sure.
I do try my own bit. When I'm through with my railfan mags and modeling mags I drop them off at the gym for the enjoyment of others. When I return a week later they're all gone, so MAYBE I'm lighting a fire somewhere. I hope so.
I should add one of my nieces got married a few weeks ago. They don't know it yet but Uncle Wayne's gotten them a Lionel starter set, steam of course, for their first Christmas tree together. And as every house where they live in Pennsylvania's got a basement who knows where that will lead to?
I hope someone continues to produce Railfan & Railroad. It is one of 3 mags I pick up everytime Iget a chance. It would be sad if it went the way of Pacific Railnews (er uh I mean Railnews). At least CTC Board made a comeback thanks to the likes of Cinthia Priest and her husband. Trains is good but CTC Board and R & R had much more in depth reporting and articles for the more hardcore railfan.
And as to this generatoin They seem to only be interested in socializing and not ever ACTUALLY doing anything to talk about. Let alone paying attention to anything going on around them, AKA Real life!!!
Recent technological changes, especially in the past 30 years, have gone a long way in contributing to the decline of the printed word and the decline of our hobby and a host of other hobbies and pastimes. These changes have also had an effect on social interactions as a whole, not necessarily for the better.
As far as spreading the hobby, it can even happen without trying. My younger stepson, who is 35, had noted my interest in railroading over the years and has picked it up on his own initiative over the last several years. Just setting an example without really advertising it can help.
Fred Frailey hit the nail on the head in his blog where he describes the loss of Carstens Publishing as "a death in the family." Eighteen years after leaving R&R and moving back to the Pacific Northwest, I still feel like Carstens was my extended family. Everyone there, from my fellow editors at R&R, RMC, and Flying Models, to the art and sales departments, front office staff, and Hal and Phyllis Carstens themselves, treated me, my wife, and my children like blood relatives. Heck, Phyllis even hosted baby showers right there in the Carstens lunch room for our Sean and Shannon.
The first train magazine I ever purchased was the July 1978 issue of Railfan. It more than lived up to its name with a superb story by Easterner Bill Rettberg on his railfanning adventure to California, along with equally good articles about designer Raymond Loewy, the Maine Central, and the Detroit & Mackinac. Great photography and printing all the way through. Plus, of course, the We'd Like You to Meet... section that always introduced us to the feature authors. And who could miss Jim Boyd's ever-popular Camera Bag column, which, in that particular issue, touched on the use of filters to make black & white film properly capture the subtle color/hue variations in locomotive paint schemes, something I would later revisit in the "C-Bag" column more than a decade later with Santa Fe's Super Fleet scheme.
As someone posted elsewhere, the merging in of Railroad Magazine diluted some of Railfan's unique character and probably softened its competitive edge with Trains. There were some fine stories, photos, and cartoons utilized from the Railroad files, but in the long run, R&R's railfan nature became less and less apparent.
And long before the recession or Hurricane Sandy could be given blame, the future could have been foretold by events in the early to mid 1990s. At a time when CTC Board was a graphic design and photographic powerhouse, and Pacific RailNews transformed into RailNews and underwent a lavish design upgrade of its own, and Trains magazine revamped its appearance and content and even its front cover logo, R&R made only two minor additions to its pages: a monthly comic strip, and a food column. Granted, those two new elements were welcomed by many of the readers. In fact, those Curt Catz cartoons often generated more reader responses than anything else in the magazine. But it was going to take much more than that to keep pace with the other magazines in the field.
Many years ago, a certain Trains editor told me that he would really like to be in charge of a "hardcore fan magazine" (his words). I don't know which publisher will be taking charge of R&R, but whomever it is, I do hope we see it become one part 1970s Railfan, perhaps one part 1980s-90s CTC Board, with no attempts to be an industry mag like Railway Age or Progressive Railroading, but rather stick to the fun and adventure of what it is to be out trackside. Oh, and I should add, a fair measure of 21st century relevance and awareness of not only what it is that the readers do, what they buy, and where they go, but how to attract (and support) the kind of advertisers who can actually benefit from all of that.
Based on content and depth of articles it should have been Model Railroader.....not Railroad Model Craftsman!
Jim Norton
Huntsville, AL
Firelock76 What's going on? Is it the fact a lot of the young aren't interested in anything that doesn't involve a computer, a tablet, or an I-pad? Are they not interested in working with their hands anymore? Is it the fact we're two generations into a group that never held a flashlight for their father while he fixed the car, or the plumbing, or anything? I don't know. I don't pretend to know. I do know the current crop of electronic gadgets are seductive, just as seductive as any drug. Look around you and see just how many people walk around with their eyes glued to their electronics, oblivious to everything else, and are totally lost when those electronics break down. Maybe the world's changing. If it is, I'm not sure it's for the better. What's the answer? I'm not sure.
When I saw this comic in the Sunday paper, I thought of this post.
http://zitscomics.com/comics/august-24-2014/
Jeff
The information biz must be tough. nowadays everything you ever wanted to know about anything is just a few clicks away. Even toilet paper and outhouses have Facebook pages that are actively liked and updated. There are thousands of online railroad sites and interest groups How does a monthly publication compete with that? Must be tough..
jeffhergert Firelock76 What's going on? Is it the fact a lot of the young aren't interested in anything that doesn't involve a computer, a tablet, or an I-pad? Are they not interested in working with their hands anymore? Is it the fact we're two generations into a group that never held a flashlight for their father while he fixed the car, or the plumbing, or anything? I don't know. I don't pretend to know. I do know the current crop of electronic gadgets are seductive, just as seductive as any drug. Look around you and see just how many people walk around with their eyes glued to their electronics, oblivious to everything else, and are totally lost when those electronics break down. Maybe the world's changing. If it is, I'm not sure it's for the better. What's the answer? I'm not sure. When I saw this comic in the Sunday paper, I thought of this post. http://zitscomics.com/comics/august-24-2014/ Jeff (Hergert)
Jeff (Hergert)
And to those comment you can definitely include the information of Bruce Kelly: [snipped] "...Fred Frailey hit the nail on the head in his blog where he describes the loss of Carstens Publishing as "a death in the family." Eighteen years after leaving R&R and moving back to the Pacific Northwest, I still feel like Carstens was my extended family. Everyone there, from my fellow editors at R&R, RMC, and Flying Models, to the art and sales departments, front office staff, and Hal and Phyllis Carstens themselves, treated me, my wife, and my children like blood relatives. Heck, Phyllis even hosted baby showers right there in the Carstens lunch room for our Sean and Shannon.
As someone posted elsewhere, the merging in of Railroad Magazine diluted some of Railfan's unique character and probably softened its competitive edge with Trains. There were some fine stories, photos, and cartoons utilized from the Railroad files, but in the long run, R&R's railfan nature became less and less apparent..." [snipped]
It would seem that the Cartoon linked by Jeff Hergert is a pretty good assessment of what is happening in this new Century; a "BRAVE NEW WORLD" of 20's and 30's somethings...Their priorities definitely seem to be on a different plain; for whatever reasoning.
The fascination with all things mechanical seems to have vanished, It seems to be all about electronics and gadgets. Cars hold no more excitement than a conveyance, and Trains are just a pain in the behind, as they crawl about the countryside, blocking traffic..
Hard to figure when and where our social priorities have shifted?Was it the mostly doing away with High School "manual" Classes? 'Homemakers' seem not to need any skills besides being able to rip the packaging off of a microwave dinner and popping into a device. Even television which is delivered with its barrage of commercials: Do you need Feminine? A new car? Not to mention a plethora of 'labor-saving kitchen equipment? And on it goes, ad nauseum.
I guess you can just count me as a railfanning Luddite.
samfp1943 jeffhergert Firelock76 What's going on? Is it the fact a lot of the young aren't interested in anything that doesn't involve a computer, a tablet, or an I-pad? Are they not interested in working with their hands anymore? Is it the fact we're two generations into a group that never held a flashlight for their father while he fixed the car, or the plumbing, or anything? I don't know. I don't pretend to know. I do know the current crop of electronic gadgets are seductive, just as seductive as any drug. Look around you and see just how many people walk around with their eyes glued to their electronics, oblivious to everything else, and are totally lost when those electronics break down. Maybe the world's changing. If it is, I'm not sure it's for the better. What's the answer? I'm not sure. When I saw this comic in the Sunday paper, I thought of this post. http://zitscomics.com/comics/august-24-2014/ Jeff (Herget) And to those comment you can definitely include the information of Bruce Kelly: [snipped] "...Fred Frailey hit the nail on the head in his blog where he describes the loss of Carstens Publishing as "a death in the family." Eighteen years after leaving R&R and moving back to the Pacific Northwest, I still feel like Carstens was my extended family. Everyone there, from my fellow editors at R&R, RMC, and Flying Models, to the art and sales departments, front office staff, and Hal and Phyllis Carstens themselves, treated me, my wife, and my children like blood relatives. Heck, Phyllis even hosted baby showers right there in the Carstens lunch room for our Sean and Shannon. The first train magazine I ever purchased was the July 1978 issue of Railfan. It more than lived up to its name with a superb story by Easterner Bill Rettberg on his railfanning adventure to California, along with equally good articles about designer Raymond Loewy, the Maine Central, and the Detroit & Mackinac. Great photography and printing all the way through. Plus, of course, the We'd Like You to Meet... section that always introduced us to the feature authors. And who could miss Jim Boyd's ever-popular Camera Bag column, which, in that particular issue, touched on the use of filters to make black & white film properly capture the subtle color/hue variations in locomotive paint schemes, something I would later revisit in the "C-Bag" column more than a decade later with Santa Fe's Super Fleet scheme. As someone posted elsewhere, the merging in of Railroad Magazine diluted some of Railfan's unique character and probably softened its competitive edge with Trains. There were some fine stories, photos, and cartoons utilized from the Railroad files, but in the long run, R&R's railfan nature became less and less apparent..." [snipped] It would seem that the Cartoon linked by Jeff Herget is a pretty good assessment of what is happening in this new Century; a "BRAVE NEW WORLD" of 20's and 30's somethings...Their priorities definitely seem to be on a different plain; for whatever reasoning. The fascination with all things mechanical seems to have vanished, It seems to be all about electronics and gadgets. Cars hpld no more excitement than a conveyance, and Trains are just a pain in the behind, as they crawl about the countryside, blocking traffic.. Hard to figure when and where our social priorities have shifted?Was it the mostly doing away with High School "manual" Classes? 'Homemakers' seem not to need any skills besides being able to rip the packaging off of a microwave dinner and popping into a device. Even television which is delivered with its barrage of commercials: Do you need Feminine? A new car? Not to mention a plethora of 'labor-saving kitchen equipment? And on it goes, ad nauseum. I guess you can just count me as a railfanning Luddite.
jeffhergert Firelock76 What's going on? Is it the fact a lot of the young aren't interested in anything that doesn't involve a computer, a tablet, or an I-pad? Are they not interested in working with their hands anymore? Is it the fact we're two generations into a group that never held a flashlight for their father while he fixed the car, or the plumbing, or anything? I don't know. I don't pretend to know. I do know the current crop of electronic gadgets are seductive, just as seductive as any drug. Look around you and see just how many people walk around with their eyes glued to their electronics, oblivious to everything else, and are totally lost when those electronics break down. Maybe the world's changing. If it is, I'm not sure it's for the better. What's the answer? I'm not sure. When I saw this comic in the Sunday paper, I thought of this post. http://zitscomics.com/comics/august-24-2014/ Jeff (Herget)
Jeff (Herget)
It would seem that the Cartoon linked by Jeff Herget is a pretty good assessment of what is happening in this new Century; a "BRAVE NEW WORLD" of 20's and 30's somethings...Their priorities definitely seem to be on a different plain; for whatever reasoning.
The fascination with all things mechanical seems to have vanished, It seems to be all about electronics and gadgets. Cars hpld no more excitement than a conveyance, and Trains are just a pain in the behind, as they crawl about the countryside, blocking traffic..
Annoying little imports with hopped up noisy,exhaust systems and ridiculously overpowered Sport Bikes are still popular with the youthful set so I wouldn't say that nobody likes vehicles anymore....they just don't like the ones's (Ford Talledega Torino, Plymouth Super Bird for me) that we do/did...
"I Often Dream of Trains"-From the Album of the Same Name by Robyn Hitchcock
I'm not so sure we liked working on vehicles back in the day either. My first car was a 74 Bobcat that I had to spend time under to keep running. I bought it in 79 when I was 17. Even at only five years old it was a rust bucket that needed regular work. I guess someone could have watched me and concluded that Ulrich likes to work on cars.. Ah... not really... we had to work on our vehicles just to keep the junkers running. Nowadays a five year old car isn't even considered broken in yet. Same with everything else.. crappy lawnmowers needed work.. today we just shoot them in the trash and buy another one at wallmart for 150 bucks.
When my daughter was born in 1991, her first christmas present was a Bowser 4 wheel trolley. We call it the Emily Trolley. Fast forward 20 years and she is attending the PA Institute of Technology at Johnstown PA. The school coordinates with Amtrak so students make the connection with the Pennsylvania (not hard when there is only one train going each way!) Said daughter was over joyed to 'ride the rails' from Central PA to Johnstown. When her education was done, she ask Santa for a model of "her train." Santa provided P42 and three Amfleet cars plus dinner. So for the last four years 'her train' goes up along with Dads Lionels sometime under the tree, sometime on the Christmas Tree board.
Just goes to prove Ipads, Ipods, Xbox 350 and PS3 doesn't take away from the fun of railroading.
On the serious side, on May 29 a major hobbyist car magazine publisher fired staff and closed up a number of publications. One was High Performance Pontiac, a publication going back to 1980 for all Pontiac muscle cars and just plan Pontiac. Like Trains, the writing was top line, content covered from the 1960 to the end of Pontiac. In fact, a multi-month celebration of the 50th anniversary of the GTO!
All for the same reasons, change of market, no one wants a publication, dying hobby, get it on the 'the net', and social media.
I'll close with this from one of my IT journals (involved in information tech for 30 years), most of us reading this are in our 40, 50, 60 +. We, are the last generation to know life before the internet, home computers, smartphones and the internet of things. We look back and remember when a phone call longer than 3 minutes was 'expensive.' We try and graps the future the next two generations swims in like fish in water. What is happening is a earth shift of our culture, much like the end of steam where whole cultures were told to clock out and don't come back (yap, spend your whole life leaning to build and fix boilers, no boilers to build, no boilers to fix, no boilers at all.)
The mechanical of things are replaced with computer control and robotics. Sure, you need to understand motors and hydraulics, but what took a skilled tool & die maker (anyone remember them?) now takes a CRT and a good CAD program. You don't need to know how your car functions, plug in your PC and you have more things to tinker with then back in the day of a Holly carburetor (remember what a four barrel was?) Don't know how to change the timing? Google it! (Have 30 years in IT and going strong, we all turn to Google when a unknown ABEND happens or a bad return code.)
So the next Thomas Edison isn't boiling down weeds to find a replacement for rubber, he is doing simulations and building it with a 3-D printer. There is a new tomorrow out there and like the Iron Horse, technology took the steam away.
Change is not always progress.
This "dying hobby" thing that surfaces every so often needs to be put in context. There was a time when seemingly every kid had an electric train, be it Lionel, Marx, American Flyer, or whatever. That time passed and many lament it, partly because today's serious model railroaders often started out with a tinplate, around-the-tree train set. I know that's how I eventually got into the hobby and went on to modeling in HO for some fifty years thereafter. But I would wager that the vast majority of kids never got that serious about it, and their trains eventually ended up in the attic or the junk pile.
The point I'm making is that model railroading (and for that matter, rail fanning), are, and always have been, comparatively small hobbies. Personally, I see no evidence that either is dying. Changes not directly related to these hobbies have taken their toll, as is the case with Carstens, but I sometimes think we are being nostalgic for something that never was.
John Timm
jimnorton Change is not always progress.
Ken G Price My N-Scale Layout
Digitrax Super Empire Builder Radio System. South Valley Texas Railroad. SVTRR
N-Scale out west. 1996-1998 or so! UP, SP, Missouri Pacific, C&NW.
Well, as his grace, the Duke of Cambridge, commanding general of the British Army in the late 19th Century once said:
"There is a time for everything, there is even a time for change. And that is when change can no longer be avoided."
Doesn't mean some change doesn't stink!
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