Recently, I have been re-reading my small cache of old Trains magazines; I have enjoyed re-reading some of the articles, in light of their relationship to the passing of time, and the historical events of 20-30-40, or so years. Many of the articles are pretty facinating; I have thought that it woud be really great if there was an on-line resource center where, for a fee, one could surf back throught those archived issues to find articles of interest, historical. or otherwise.
My questions are:
How many others would find such a store of information,interesting enought to want to access the history that those archived, back issues represent?
Would you be willing to access such a resource for a fee? How much ould you pay to have the whole library of back issues to go through?
Would such a project be of interest to the Kalmbach? How much would they want to do by way of putting their library on the 'net? I remember, and really enjoyed, in particular, John Allen's Gorre and Daphited Railroad articles, and photos of his handy work in Model Railroader.
I know of no plans, official or otherwise for this project from Kalmbach; or any other source, but I was wondering if there was any interest out there for a project to create this kind of resource base among the Forum members.
Any comments would be appreciated, Thanks, in advance.
Sam, Kalmbach plans on selling PDF article colloections like this-
http://www.trains.com/trc/default.aspx?c=a&id=61
I would prefer they sold 1 year, or six month, PDF files of back issues.
Carl
Railroader Emeritus (practiced railroading for 46 years--and in 2010 I finally got it right!)
CAACSCOCOM--I don't want to behave improperly, so I just won't behave at all. (SM)
That would be neat if they did it by decade and by subject such as railroad,freight,passenger,diesel,steam,operations,history,physical plant,etc.
Have a good one.
Bill B
If it is reasonably priced, I would go for it. It would be neat to group items together, either by individual railroad or topic....but that would be quite a bit of work for the Kalmbach folks.
For instance, a file of all the Maps of the Month would be good, either on disk or as a PDF.
ed
nanaimo73 wrote: Sam, Kalmbach plans on selling PDF article colloections like this-http://www.trains.com/trc/default.aspx?c=a&id=61 I would prefer they sold 1 year, or six month, PDF files of back issues.
Dale:
I had seen the Alleghany piece, but was not particularlly interested in that subject area enough to investigate it. As you indicated, my interest was more on the line of articles in issues on subjects of interest to me, on a per issue basis. I am more than likely, going to purchase the curent offering, to see what I think.
I am not sure if the downloadable PDF is what I was thinking of, or a CD of a specific issue.
My personal feeling is that the availability of a version of historical articles in a specific issue, would be of interest to many of us.
samfp1943 wrote: I am not sure if the downloadable PDF is what I was thinking of, or a CD of a specific issue.
Which brings up an interesting question:
If Trains magazine were available as a CD subscription (probably at a slightly reduced rate), would people prefer the CD over the magazine? Or vice versa?
I would be interested in such a product - have just about every issue between April 1967 and present with scattered coverage back to 1962. The issue I'd like the most was the late 1950's with the subject Of "Who shot the passenger train?".
As for print vs pdf (possibly in the form of a CD-ROM), I'd much rather have the print form - can take it pretty much anywhere and there are times that I don't want to be staring at a computer screen.
samfp1943 wrote: Dale: I had seen the Alleghany piece, but was not particularlly interested in that subject area enough to investigate it. As you indicated, my interest was more on the line of articles in issues on subjects of interest to me, on a per issue basis. I am more than likely, going to purchase the curent offering, to see what I think.
Sam, I have about 570 issues, and am missing about 220. I'm not interested in buying a compilation when I have half of it already.
If people can put 1500 page Official Guides on CDs, it must be possible to put a whole year on a CD. I'd love to purchase each year from 1940 until 1961.
My favorite parts from the 1950s Trains are DPM's News and Editorial Comments. They are full of history. Judging by the current offering, N&EC will not be available.
There were discussions on these forums about a year or so ago which advocated placing all of MR's issues onto CD Rom. The PDF downloads availible today (For a cost) I think is a result of that.
I for one wont mind getting digital copies of each and every MR made on a few disks with each page properly reproduced and sorted by year in 10 year sets. It probably will not happen in my life time.
In the mean time Im slowly going through my stack of magazines and getting ready to scan onto the hard drive articles I want to keep and throw the rest of the space consuming (In some cases rotting) magazines away, keeping only the few "Good" ones such as the last several years worth.
I think some of the problems were copyrights, royalties and cost of manpower, equiptment and time to digitize all of the Magazines dating back to day one. Who knows if all of us scanned what we do have availible into a common server host and filled in the missing ones over time we might have a database freely accessible by anyone on these forums. But again it may bypass alot of the Information Station PDF's Kalmbach is offering for a price and may not be acceptable here.
I'll have to admit, having a question posed here "answered" with the solicitation that what I need to do is call the back issue dept and buy the entire may 1966 issue, just to get an answer to the question, is not very heartwarming, so in that narrow vein, I probaly would prefer online access over having to play the "back issues" game.
But then you run into the cost Kalmbach would have to incurr to digitize their archives, versus the revenue stream it would hope to generate. And ask "would it pay for itself?"
My uninformed suspicion is, that it would not. It would cost them several thousand dollars to digitize it all, probably 5 figures a couple times over.
Selling access to single copies would put their payback WAYYYYY down the road.
Many magazines are digitizing their new issues, and giving subscribers free access to those archives, which makes you think twice before daring to let those subscriptions lapse. Trains probably should give serious consideration to that.
Now, as far as the historical archives go, here's what would suit me; Assuming they would digitize the hole collection, and then sell hourly subscriptions to access the whole wad?
I'd gladly pay $1.00/hr just to browse, and more for any articles printed.
If managed right, such a system could be a real cash cow for Kalmbach, have some old head come on here and recount the "ATSF-SP water wars 0f 1910" as recounted in the XX-XX-195X issue of trains, how many people from here would be accessing that issue through the archives just to see for themselves? MANY is my guess
My idea was to open this up for a discussion, and I appreciate the responses. As was mentioned earlier, the PDF formated articles on the Operations of CSX and its predecessor roads in the Alleghanies, are a good start. I was unsure how some of the "younger" Forum members would respond to this article, as history seems to have become an area of somewhat less academic importance in today's society; in favor of 'the what is happening now, versus those of us who have the mind set that you need to know where you have been, in order to know where you might be heading' school of historical significance.
What I would hope for is a web- based catalogue of each article in the historical issues of TRAINS, and then as Anti-Gates suggested, a chance to surf the articles for a time based fee, and then the ability to purchase articles in a format that would be purchased for an additional fee, in the manner of the magazine itself.
It would allow those who have not been able to amass the large collection of back issues such as Dale had mentioned, he has. My collection has dwindled over the years from attrition due to moving, humidity, and the fact that others were not as interested in my collection as I was. It seems such a shame that the knowledge and opinions of the TRAINS contributors is locked away in an archive and only available to a few individuals. It is a shame that the oft quoted David P. Morgan, as well as John Kneiling. J David, Ingles,and many others who contributed articles and photographs; that these should be unread and held in archives, unseen by all but a very few.
I would at the very least like to see, as a feature in current publications, maybe the reprinting of some of the previous materials that have been published years ago..
This same topic came up on the MR forum a few days ago and has generated a lot of talk.
Check it out here http://www.trains.com/trccs/forums/991295/ShowPost.aspx
If Kalmbach does not have the capital to digitize the collection I think Volunteers under a master manager who holds the list of each monthly issue submitted by year will eventually identify periods and gaps in coverage that can then be filled in.
For example I have all of MR's 1976 issues except two months or so, one of which is part three of the Marquette and Independance Series that I fear that will always be lost forever. If I digitized all of my availible 1976's from home page by page and submitted it to Kalmbach as files that can be converted to PDF or other type of use on-line and others digitized the missing issues and kept going maybe our collections will be preserved in digital form forever.
Revelance to today's railroaders? I guess 1950 is still revelant today in very many ways. If someone is trying to model the steam era 1950 or whatever month and year issue would be written during that time period and present so much valueable information. I remember some industry articles that are basically recipies of how to make a product. Or perhaps some of Andy's switching puzzles that may provide additional meat and potatoes to Jan and Feb 2007's current operations focused issues.
As I stated, an organized group of volunteers with computers and scanners donating thier time and skills to get these old paper issues digital will help alot towards allowing Kalmbach pernament access grant to the contributors of the effort. Others can probably have a dollar an hour or whatever as a subscription fee to have access to these issues. We just need a Leader with a master list of every issue created since the very first one filling in and marking off each issue as it comes in. After a time he can now generate a list of missing issues that can be pulled from the Library of Congress, Kalmbach's basement or out of estate sales of those who have passed on. I dont know. LOL.
The Information Station Articles for a few dollars have the potentail for good income but why are we paying 5.00 for a John Allen article of a few pages when entire issues way back in the 70's was less than half that cost on the newsstand? Surely the bandwidth is alot cheaper because gaming server hosters usually have 4.00 per slot up to 128 players per server per month and there is a LARGE amount of bandwidth consumed by these gamers 24/7 depending on activity.
I do know that eventually old back issues will be thrown out, sold, disposed of or otherwise lost forever as people die off. I think 30 years from now no one will be left to do anything about it and collections will be preserved on paper in places very remote and likely gaurded away from the common hobbyist who cannot travel or otherwise rely on the internet to get to it.
I bet that long ago when people printed and sold magazines no one ever thought of preservation in forms that must be like something out of Buck Rogers Cartoons 50+ years down the road. Imagine where we would be that far down the road with papers, pencils and rote learning in classrooms deemed obselete and no longer used.
I will tell you there is no greater enjoyment than actually sitting down and reading a new magazine issue that just arrived in the mail. Current Subsriptions will continue. Dont worry. But... every 5 years or so, my spouse gets to complaining about all of that space hogged by the stacks of magazines and they need to go. What to do then? Digital them onto the computer and toss the paper.
Safety Valve wrote:I do know that eventually old back issues will be thrown out, sold, disposed of or otherwise lost forever as people die off. I think 30 years from now no one will be left to do anything about it and collections will be preserved on paper in places very remote and likely gaurded away from the common hobbyist who cannot travel or otherwise rely on the internet to get to it.
Another question: Don't most libraries carry magazine subscriptions on micro-fiche or microfilm?
Datafever wrote: Safety Valve wrote: I do know that eventually old back issues will be thrown out, sold, disposed of or otherwise lost forever as people die off. I think 30 years from now no one will be left to do anything about it and collections will be preserved on paper in places very remote and likely gaurded away from the common hobbyist who cannot travel or otherwise rely on the internet to get to it.Another question: Don't most libraries carry magazine subscriptions on micro-fiche or microfilm?
Safety Valve wrote: I do know that eventually old back issues will be thrown out, sold, disposed of or otherwise lost forever as people die off. I think 30 years from now no one will be left to do anything about it and collections will be preserved on paper in places very remote and likely gaurded away from the common hobbyist who cannot travel or otherwise rely on the internet to get to it.
Maybe. But I think we are WAAAAAAYYYYYY beyond Micros. Besides you would have to travel to that library and then SORT thru all of the films to FIND the articles. No one has the time, money or expenses for it. That is what the Internet is for. Being able to get to things without having to engage in costly travel.
I bet with today's scanners you can reproduce a orginal issue kept in good condition with just about perfect color. I think Micros are only black and white if they are still useable.
Several years ago, I purchased National Geographic as a multi-CD set. It was basically just a scan of each page. I was not impressed. I won't be doing that again.
I think to be useful, it would have to be PDF or HTML based, with links that will take you to where you want to go.
I pretty much have all issues from 1971 to present, other than the 2004 issue with the UP trains per day map! Also have a large percentage from about 1965 thru 1971. I will never, no no NEVER get rid of those issues. It is a non negotiable item in my discussions with the future Mrs. MP173.
I would pay a yearly fee to access old issues, particularly with a search capability.
Agree with the comments regarding David Morgan's editorials. They were great, as were his articles.
Perhaps we should enlist FutureModal to negotiate open access to all Kalmbach files, including unpublished photos and articles. Dave where are you?
I have talked with the editorial staffs of MR and TRAINS over the past several years (nearly 10) at various times about this subject. My proposition has been either a CD or printed magazine at the regular subscription rate. I do not have the room for printed magazines to "pile up" over the years. If I had, I would have every TRAINS and MODEL RAILROADER since (at least) 1955.
It is possible to have all of the TRAINS or MR's on one CD, but it would have to be PRINT ONLY and without any of the adds. To have the photo's included, would take a CD probably for each year, or perhaps each 2 years. I can't see a five year CD, but a DVD might hold 10 years worth.
But, perhaps, the best solution is to have all of the various magazines (here, TRAINS and MR) on a server at Kalmbach with access at the regular subscription price. Sorting by any keyword or subject you may want or by each individual issue. If you want the magazine in its printed form also, then the subscription price times two.
Just this past summer, I had dinner with Kathi Kube and we talked about just this item. Perhaps the .pdf offerings we see now from Kalmbach are a marketing demonstration project of all of our efforts.
And, Ed at MP173, you may just have it, perhaps this would, indeed, keep FM Dave busy making a true "Open Access" research and entertainment archive for the enjoyment and education of us all.
I would like to see a subscription based on Hard copy + a yearly digital archive, via CD or DVD. (DVD players are much more common now, and you could get pictures and all for a year on one!)
I would be willing to pay a little more for the combination subscription...
I prefer reading from a magazine, but dont have room to keep many for long...thus, with a combination subscription I could read at my leisure/convience, but keep for reference forever...
I suspect that starting that servie now would be a very small incremental cost to Kalmbach...I would be very surprised if the publishing effort is not digitized in some manner. After that, its a matter of conversion.
This would also allow another subscription opportunity...
a) hard copy only
b) hard copy + archive DVD (delivered in end of the year issue)
c) archive copy only, for sale at end of the year.
Of course, I would hope that the combination price would be significantly less than the A + C option...since they know how many they will need, it would be easy to predict expenses and keep the cost low, then all later CD sales would be Gravy...
As for past issues, I would like to have access to them, but am not sure what format would suite my cost/benefits requirements...The thought of a text only version (no pictures) is not very appealing at this point, because a properly used photo adds greatly to the impact and actually makes the article easier to understand...
I suspect that the scanned back issues model is the only cost effective way to do that...
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