# Anybody ready to buy 900 issues of Model Railroader?



## joe rusz (Jan 3, 2008)

Model Railroader has put all 75 years of its magazine (that's 900 issues) on a DVD, which I think is a terrific idea for someone like me who enjoys pawing through those old mags, looking for building plans and all sorts of neat stuff. Most of the time, I look for back issues at model train shows or in hobby shops where some guy's wife has just unloaded her late hubby's collection. You can pay a few bucks for these magazines and they're not always in the best condition. Now Kalmbach has made it real easy, by making the whole thing digital. Here's the tough part: the DVD costs $195. So I was wondering, is anyone gonna pay to play?


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## bnsfconductor (Jan 3, 2008)

That much cash, no thanks! Maybe under $50 it might be worth it. 195/900= .21 I guess that's not to bad considering the cover price. I wonder if once they have all of them digitized they will offer them for sale individually? That might be worth more money. I would be willing to pay a little more for a single issue when looking for a specific article, but almost $200 for the whole thing seems a little steep for me. That's quite a chunk of change out of the model train budget (a new locomotive)! 
Craig


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## joe rusz (Jan 3, 2008)

Yep, that's a lot of gittas. I just read the fine print on the MR site and it says the 75 years DVD set won't ship until December. Just in time for the holidays, ya think? BTW, if you are a National Model Railroad Assn. member, you can get Xerox copies of articles, plans, etc from many model train and (I think) real train magazines such as Trains, by contacting the Kalmbach Memorial Library. There's a nominal fee--like a buck or something--but the copies are clean and sharp and a lot better than the ones I make on my home scanner/printer or, worse than that, at the local copy store.


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## noelw (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By joe rusz on 10 Jun 2011 11:49 PM 
Model Railroader has put all 75 years of its magazine (that's 900 issues) on a DVD, which I think is a terrific idea for someone like me who enjoys pawing through those old mags, looking for building plans and all sorts of neat stuff. Most of the time, I look for back issues at model train shows or in hobby shops where some guy's wife has just unloaded her late hubby's collection. You can pay a few bucks for these magazines and they're not always in the best condition. Now Kalmbach has made it real easy, by making the whole thing digital. Here's the tough part: the DVD costs $195. So I was wondering, is anyone gonna pay to play? 
Boy that's a lot of moooooola.. 
Here i was thinking of dumping mine old copys in the recyc can. I have a lot of hit and miss issues due to moving but, I found an old copy in black and white print 1949 .. lost the cover for it thro.. Boy never knew how mush space it takes up. 8 stacks about 4 foot high.. .. 
There mixed Model Railroader and Railroad Moders. Guess that why it takes up some storage room.
Nice to have the DVD, but it's a little high priced.


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

The whole problem with magazines is the storage space they take up. 

I much prefer sitting on the john reading the rag to only reading magazines on the PC or my phone. 

But when I'm looking for an article of something, I just don't have the time to start looking through all the magazines.


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## Spule 4 (Jan 2, 2008)

Dad bought the entire collection of "Trains" already, and the DVD for "Model Railroader" is around $200 if memory serves, which is not a lot of money in my book for what you get. 

The search function of the "Trains" version is good and we have found several odd bits using it. You can print off articles also. 

The question is, what should dad do with an entire set of paper MRs going back to 1957....


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## wchasr (Jan 2, 2008)

I will likely be asking for this for myself as a gift. It will free up some storage space for me. But of the magazines I subscribe to only a little bit of space. 

Chas


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## Mik (Jan 2, 2008)

With the way technology moves will your computer 5 or 10 or 20 years from now still read the disc? Or will you have to keep an old one around to view it? How much will you have to pay for again in the next gee whiz format? Will it even be available? 

Think I'm nuts? I think I have Autocad (rather spendy in it's day) on those real old floppy discs someplace. The chances it would run, even if I had a drive to load it are????? 

Buy it if you want. If nothing else you'll have a set of interesting coasters


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## wchasr (Jan 2, 2008)

Allen, 
Since I work with AutoCAD pretty regularly I can vouch that while spendy in the day it's nothing compared to what you'd spend now to buy it. IF you'd upgraded those old floppies to CD's back then chances are you'd still be able to use the program..... playing on Solidworks today and that is even more a magnitude of expense over basic AutoCAD. 

Chas


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## krs (Feb 29, 2008)

Posted By Mik on 13 Jun 2011 11:18 AM 
With the way technology moves will your computer 5 or 10 or 20 years from now still read the disc? Or will you have to keep an old one around to view it? How much will you have to pay for again in the next gee whiz format? Will it even be available? 

Think I'm nuts? I think I have Autocad (rather spendy in it's day) on those real old floppy discs someplace. The chances it would run, even if I had a drive to load it are????? 

Buy it if you want. If nothing else you'll have a set of interesting coasters 
We're talking about data DVDs here, not an application like AutoCad.

I assume the DVDs will be in pdf and as technology marches on, one will just copy the data to a different media and maybe convert the format to a newer one.
None of that is an issue even 20 years hence.

I had a bunch of old floppies with data on them, also 100 MB and 250 MB ZIP cartridges - just got an external USB ZIP drive and an external USB floppy drive and copied all the data to my computer.

I can then store it on the hard drive or burn a DVD or BlueRay or whatever.

The issue I would have besides the price which is about twice the going rate (The German MIBA magazine has been offering something similar, all their old issues from 1948 to 2008, over 830 issues, 5 DVDs for $US 85.-) is the usefulness for Large Scalers.

I used to subscribe to Model Railroader for years, but there was less and less content about Large Scale. Until the 70s there won't be any Large Scale info in Model Railroader and after that it was only a few articles per year.

The idea is great for H0 and N, the magazines took an incredible amount of space with 3/4 or more of it advertising, but unless one is into H0 or N as well, I see little use.

Knut


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## SteveC (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By krs on 13 Jun 2011 12:31 PM 

We're talking about data DVDs here, not an application like AutoCad.

I assume the DVDs will be in pdf and as technology marches on, one will just copy the data to a different media and maybe convert the format to a newer one.
None of that is an issue even 20 years hence.

I had a bunch of old floppies with data on them, also 100 MB and 250 MB ZIP cartridges - just got an external USB ZIP drive and an external USB floppy drive and copied all the data to my computer.

I can then store it on the hard drive or burn a DVD or BlueRay or whatever.

The issue I would have besides the price which is about twice the going rate (The German MIBA magazine has been offering something similar, all their old issues from 1948 to 2008, over 830 issues, 5 DVDs for $US 85.-) is the usefulness for Large Scalers.

I used to subscribe to Model Railroader for years, but there was less and less content about Large Scale. Until the 70s there won't be any Large Scale info in Model Railroader and after that it was only a few articles per year.

The idea is great for H0 and N, the magazines took an incredible amount of space with 3/4 or more of it advertising, but unless one is into H0 or N as well, I see little use.

Knut
Providing they didn't include some type of scheme that prevents you from copying the CD/DVD in an attempt (note, I did say attempt) to protect their Copyright intellectual property rights. Oh, the wonderful benefits of electronic publishing, kind of hard to pirate a printed magazine in printed form but scan it once and it's easy.









But there are a lot of drawings contained within those magazines that can be enlarged/reduced and then become useful in others scales.


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## joe rusz (Jan 3, 2008)

I know all about how much space magazines take up. I used to collect Hot Rod, which I took to an automotive books and collectibles show where I sold them to a professional trader, in desperation, because it was the end of the day, for about 50 cents each. But still my den is full of other mags. I still 39 years of Road & Track representing my life there. And I've got about 22 years of MR, GR, Gazette, and Finescale, plus assorted railroad books and MR annuals and Kalmbach how-to magazines. So a DVD sounds good to me. Now all's I gotta do is sell something to get the cash.


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