I've had luck with flea markets or similar, and especially with garage sales and non-auction estate sales, for various RR magazines, books, and other memorabilia. However, if you see them mentioned in the sale's advertizing, especially non-auction estate sales, you normally need to be there at the very beginning of the sale to make sure you get first pick. My experiences have been that a majority of the time these can be very cheap if no RR fan or RR anique expert has helped the sellers with the pricing. Also, the sellers at these events will almost always bargain down from the asking prices if the asking prices aren't already a good deal for the buyer.
You might consider checking with your local library. Although not for sale, my library has issues all the way back into the 1940s.
In the 'olden days' there were businesses that explicitly catered to stocking and providing back issues of railfan publications. If I remember correctly, some routinely advertised in the back pages of Trains and other magazines. You might look around for dealers in old periodicals, who might have 'subsections' containing railfan interest, or who might know people who do.
With the rise of the Internet, and more particularly the Berners-Lee 'World Wide Web' and the rise of Google and other indexing and search tools for it, businesses like this could fairly easily establish a 'Web presence' and list their stock in current form with (relative) ease of ordering. I remember looking at one such site within the past three years (but can't tell you what it was or specifically where to find it). These may be remarkably hard to find in any kind of Google search, for a variety of reasons, but once you 'know where they are' they may be just what you needed.
Other providers that started out with their own sites or Web presence have decided to participate in other platforms like the eBay 'stores' system. Acadia Collectibles, which specializes (or did) in model-railroading magazines, is one example of a store-based operation. Having a store of course facilitates offering anything 'slow-moving' as an eBay auction.
I can't think of a store site other than eBay that explicitly serves the back-number market for railfans. Most alternatives are geared more to popular items, with any magazines being effectively buried in a mass of other 'old stuff' and possibly not trackable unless you have the exact words in their title or description. Even sites like the old Heritage Rail tend to be more attuned to modern goods or historical artifacts, not older publications.
@southernalco, welcome to the Internet!
southernalcoDoes anyone sell back issues of train and/or model railroad magazines
There's this site called eBay.com; perhaps you should check it out.
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Trains does.
http://trn.trains.com/issues
Lots of people do. You can check at various swap sessions and similar events. It may take a bit of looking but they can be found.
Does anyone sell back issues of train and/or model railroad magazines
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