I am fine with the on-line

I am fine with the on-line version of the newsletter with ONE EXCEPTION.

Give me a scale index that only pops up the things relevant to my scale.

The biggest turnoff to all of the model train magazines is having to wade thru stuff about scales I do not use.

On-line and out of the box

Thanks, Tom

SPTom:

Thanks for your kind words about MRH. It is true that we're less space constrained than a print magazine, and we've taken advantage of that fact to do in-depth how to articles. We're glad to hear that you appreciate the level of depth we're taking.

Here on the staff, we run hot and cold on taking this much space to do a single how-to article. The pros are pretty well known and are as expressed in your feedback - the depth allows even the least experienced modeler follow the process with a high chance of success.

The cons are several as well: if the article is not of interest to you, now a huge section of the magazine is a total waste for you. Large articles drive our copy editors to distraction because they're far more complex to edit than a short article. And large articles also run the risk of scaring off beginners.

Lots of large articles in an issue also means there's less content variety in an issue. For a free magazine, content variety is our lifeblood - since we're free, we figure if there's at least one article of interest in an issue you'll go ahead and download it. Less variety means we run the risk of appealing to fewer modelers and it will hurt our circulation for that issue.

And finally, while we're not necessarily space constrained, we are time constrained - especially with our new bimonthly schedule. And we are space constrained in the sense that we can't keep increasing the file download size indefinitely.

I'd be interested in hearing reader feedback on this - more variety or more depth? Do you have a preference?

Yes

I think a bit of both is good.

While I am a flagrant Model Railroader fan boy, I do miss some the depth the "Railroad You Can Model" series used to have. By the way, discussing a prototype and then developing track plans for it is my absolute FAVORITE article type. Anyway.. those have been trimmed way back now. Is this a problem? Maybe not.. if you are interested in the prototype there is a lot more info on the web. Used to be all you could learn was what they printed. Maybe that has a bearing. Still, I miss the in-depth background some of this articles would have.

On the other hand.. short and sweet articles are good too. If there is a how-to that is more then a couple of pages long.. I am going to assume it is a bit of an involved project and may not pay it as much attention. There is an art to boiling down a presentation to be only what you need, nothing more and nothing less.

So.. I am all for in-depth articles but lets have some scuccinct material too.

Put another way, make the articles that interest me long and the ones that don't short .

Chris

Feedback

Joe , Fellows ..

{more variety or more depth?}

I say one deep and the rest as overview which will plumb interest which could beget a deeper article. The deep response / request from last issue is the deep one next and so on. So the overviews are seen as test of the waters. Then hyping the deep article as such , next issue  . An issue by issue poll taken which begets participation .

As far as amount of content , I have "recent posts" bookmarked and go directly to that page on the site. This is the biggest part of the experience for me. I enjoy the  chatter of the blog o sphere and the current topics. Not all are of interest , It is a big amount of information .We get to pick and choose .

Most important , it is real time by the real model railroaders . Not what the "print" magazine editors feel is current in the depth they can fit into the magazines between the advertising . The most prominent point of the whole debate is the real time by "the people" on what topic is of interest to us today . Problems solved by knowledgable people  in real time or close to it .

Dang and heck , how good is that. ?.

Quantity VS Quality

I like in depth articles.  Variety is important but if it comes at the expense of detail I'm not sure that's a step in the right direction.

It's the one or two page articles that print magazines seem to favor that are to me often a disappointment and perhaps a waste of time in some cases.  All too often they are little more than directions to the store and how-to open the package!

As an example, a while back I was advised on another forum to seek out a back issue containing an article that dealt with using CCTV cameras and monitors on a layout.  The article in question was touted as being a great How-To for setting up CCTV on your layout.  What the article turned out to be was a description of the authors shopping trip complete with a plug for the store where he bought his hardware.  The How-To portion touched on opening boxes, plugging in AC adapters and turning on the switch.  Not much of value was included for a novice and having worked on CCTV systems in the past, it was a complete waste of my time.

This sort of article, I can do without.

It's going to be tough to

It's going to be tough to please everybody. What do i look for when the magazine comes out every other month? Well, something to entertain me, something to teach me, something to make me look forward and inspired. So far I think you have the formula down correctly. Some light articles on other layouts, scenery techniques, paints, etc... Then you have some real in depth articles like the huge turntable thing. You can tell I did not read all of that one, but that was my choice, and doesn't minimise my support for the magazine. Some prototype information is always interesting regards to operations and the like. Having variety does not have to be at the expense of quality, and vice versa. You can have both, and should have both.

There have been a couple of blogs that would have been great articles on operations. Cripes, even the ease of access to the sponsors offers some valuable information at just a few clicks away.  So just carry on, and as someone else said, the forums can take some articles to a whole new level of detail, something a paper mag just cannot do.       

I like what you are doing, Joe.

I tired of the print magazines because they either got in the habit of using the same authors all of the time, or those authors were the only ones submitting articles.  The U.S. and Canada are huge, and vastly different from one part of the country to another which is reflected in the scenery, trains, architecture, and vegetation.  Having article after article featuring one part of the country, leaves the rest of the country out.  I didn't read the article on the turntable, I just skimmed it.  I don't run steam, so that wasn't for me, but undoubtably appealed to other modelers.  I read very carefully the article in the current issue on roof top details.  Since the most common view of a model railroad is the "helicopter view" looking down on our rooftops, some of the most important detailing we can do as modelers is on the roof in my opinion.  On the other hand a short article like the one by Charlie on removeable loads is far more valuable to me than the two or three pages it took to present it. 

I think as long as you have features with a wide appeal, and try to move the appeal around to various parts of the country or even the world when it comes to model railroad or scenery features, you will be successful in appealing to a wide range of modelers. 

You might even consider trying to have a "World Corner" where you have a 2-4 pages of layout features from other parts of the world besides North America.  Since this magazine is on the World Wide Web, it is just as easy for someone in Europe, Asia, South America, or Australia to download the mag as it is for Canadians and Americans.

Russ makes some good points!

I was the same with the turntable article, where I am not reading it word for word, but I read the Roof top Detail article, in detail!

In wishing for detailed articles I would not want to leave out shorter, yet invaluable articles like Charlies removable loads.

Yup, makes sense.

Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems to me the magazine has already run features or articles from the UK and Australia...?

You are right about the U.K. and Australia, Kevin.

I was just thinking that a new column apearing in each issue called "World Corner" or something like that featuring work done by modelers overseas, might make our overseas friends feel more at home with the magazine.  It would also encourage them to have at least a small space in the magazine that was not necessarily dedicated to 100% North American prototypes.

Just creating the column doesn't create content

There's an interesting thing about magazines - just creating a column doesn't automatically create content. Without content already in hand, creating a column doesn't really help.

It works more like this:

1. We want content submitted from outside the US - so please propose non-US articles to us.

2. If we get enough such content backlog, we can create a column to provide a place for it every issue.

Unfortunately, it really doesn't work the other way around too often. A concept for a column is the easy part. Filling it with real content is the grunt work needed for an idea to come to reality.

Anybody willing to roll up their sleeves and submit some of this content?

A word on editorial bias

I can't leave this idea of "just create a column" without commenting on editorial bias.

Recently, we had a subscriber leave us and his reason was that we were biased against scales other than HO.

I had to respond to him because the reverse is actually the truth. If we get two articles on a subject - one HO and one not HO, all other things being equal, we're more likely to pick the non-HO one because we get so darn few non-HO submissions!

HO is nearly 70% of the hobby population, so naturally, we get more HO submissions than all the other scales combined. It also seems the smaller the population, the fewer modelers who bother to submit articles. It's almost a reverse bias on the part of the modelers in the minority scales.

Notice, our bias is actually the reverse! If you are modeling in a minority scale and you can compose understandable sentences and take halfway decent photos - your chances of getting published with us is actually *greater*. Same is true of non-US stuff. We want to see the articles - and they really stand out when we get such a submission because they're so rare.

Be careful painting the editors of the modeling magazines with a bias that's actually a reality of the hobby population - a reality that they can't change no matter how hard they wish or plead with modelers.

Thanks, Joe.

I realized that the editorial content goes ahead of the column.  I guess I was throwing out a challenge to our overseas friends to send in some stuff in hopes of seeing a column started.

Depth vs. Diversity

I quite like Charley's idea, but it isn't always practical as you need to have more in-depth articles almost ready to go when the voting begins because there isn't time to pull an in-depth article together and get it published for the next issue.  The only way it works is if you do a summary article of an already completed in-depth one.  But still, you can take a shorter article and perhaps attempt to have the writer create a more in-depth article for an issue or two down the road (or a new writer jump on the opportunity). 

As for the submissions for our international friends, I do think the biggest issue is that the vast majority of readers are like me - love the content but don't feel like they have the skills/knowledge level in the hobby to present something that others would find useful, so we don't try.  I did submit an article idea to MR many years ago and they encouraged me to submit the article, but as I was writing it, I figured it just wasn't good enough for them to publish, so I never submitted it.  I'll never know if it was good enough now.  I've certainly seen some great posts by some overseas that I would think have the skills/knowledge to provide some good articles, but perhaps they don't have time to do it, either. 

Submitting articles

Dave:

I certainly understand the point you make about having the skills to do an article submission. First off, I will give the pat answer - that's what editors are for. If you can write somewhat coherently we will work with you.

Second, the pictures generally matter more than the text. You can have an article with good photography and so-so text and it will typically get positive feedback from everyone interested in the topic.

GETTING STARTED WRITING FOR MRH

Like anything, you should approach doing articles in baby steps - crawl before you walk, walk before you run, and so on.

Submit some tips to us. They're a paragraph or two, maybe a photo - and if you submit 3 or 4 tips with some photos you can finance a good part of your next loco at $25 per tip accepted plus $10 per photo used.

Next, try a one-evening project article. Take some technique you're doing, even if you got it from someone else, and show us the application. Examples of a technique being applied are worth more than you might think, and not everyone may know about the technique. If you know where you got the technique, it's always nice to credit the source - but the fact you didn't invent the technique should never stop you from providing an example of how the technique is applied.

A one-evening project is about 400-800 words, and maybe 6-12 photos.Nothing too difficult to do, and you'll net maybe $80 - $160 for your trouble.

Next is what we call "filler" articles. Think 1000-2500 words, and maybe 10-20 images and/or diagrams. You'll get maybe $120 - $260 for the effort there.

Then we get to feature articles - the larger articles we build an entire issue around. Here we're talking 3000 - 8000 words, and 25-100 photos. You'll also walk away with a nice chunk of change from these articles - $300 - $1000 or more.

THE STAFF CAN'T DO IT ALL

If you start with the tips, then work up through the various sized articles you can build your confidence enough that you might eventually get a feature article or two under your belt. Those who have done feature articles for us have found the money's not too bad and they've also done us all a great service by detailing a facet of the hobby in some good depth.

Some of the more prolific writers in the hobby have figured out that if you write frequently about what you're doing in the hobby, you can just about finance the entire hobby on your articles.

The staff just doesn't have the time nor the expertise to do all the articles in an issue - we absolutely depend on modelers deciding to document something they're doing for the benefit of the rest of us. Without that, there is no magazine.

Take the plunge!

I felt the same way about the static grass article, that it was not going to be good enough.  I still wonder if Joe was just really desperate for an article and I happened to be at the right place at the right time, but then I don't think luck or desperation really have much to do with selecting content for publication and he did reward my efforts handsomely!

All I can say to anyone considering writing an article is to get on with it!  Submit a query to see if there is interest in your idea and start planning it.

You'll need good quality images so a good digital camera and someone who knows how to use it will be required.

It takes a bit of discipline to get used to stopping at each stage of a project to take photos or video.  That's something I had particular trouble with because I like to dive in and build without breaks in the action too often.

So don't talk yourself out of trying to get an article published, talk yourself INTO trying to get your idea published!

If I can do it, so can you!

I absolutely agree with you

I absolutely agree with you on that one.That is one of the main reasons why i will not subscibe to most model railroad subscriptions.I feel as if i' getting less of a product if i pay for a full year,and maybe see 2 issues that cater to my scale and era,(HO scale,modern era,1990-present).

Excellent May/June Edition

 Again a great deal of praise should be given to the editors of MRH who have done a fantastic job with this edition of the magazine. It inspires me greatly to read fantastic articles like Lance Mindheim's call to the modern era and the excellent piece on LED lighting. I get stoked whenever I read the MRH!

A scale index for the online version of the magazine

T Meserol e has put forward a fascinating suggestion to create an index that turns on or off content depending on your scale preferences. Is this possible with the online version? 

I would imagine there are some huge hurdles to jump over to build a tool like that into the magazine but it would certainly be an innovation that would make MRH stand out even more. 

As for me, I'm a newbie so I read everything - even the ads which often can teach me a thing or two as well so my scale index would be set to 'everything'!

Work work work work work

Hi all,

Issue 7 had one difference that's probably (hopefully) invisible to most readers. Joe Fugate didn't put it all together. I did. Let me qualify that - Joe spent I don't know how many hours sitting at my side and gently showing me how to use the various features of the Adobe CS4 suite to slowly pull order from the chaos of a stack of articles.

It doesn't sound too hard, but until you've done it you have NO idea how much work is involved. Getting the list of articles, getting the articles in rough form (text and pics) then doing paste up of the individual articles using Adobe InDesign.  I did some pasteup. Patty, Joe's wife, does the lion's share of paste up. Once each article is pasted up (paste up refers to older technology where articles were pasted on a sheet of white paper, which was photographed and the negative converted into printing plates - it's all electronic now, but the name lingers on for the process) it's sent out to the authors to verify accuracy and style. Sometimes there are 3 or 4 round trips before the authors are satisfied. Then, it goes off to a pro copy editor who looks it over for poor grammar, awkward wording, speling erroors, inappropriate punctuation, incorrect caption numbers. Those changes get incorporated and now the article is ready for insertion in the master magazine file.

A master, 140 to 150 page InDesign file can be hundreds of megabytes and takes up to a half minute to load or save on a fairly fast computer.  InDesign isn't the most stable software out there - yes it has lots of good features that are really useful during pasteup and publishing, but on several occaisions I got sudden blue screens of death from it.  Save the work often, and under different file names.  When it starts showing signs of aberrant behaviour, save, shut everything down and reboot.

Repeat for each article as they arrive.

Then it's time to figure out where the ads (the necessary evils that pay for everything you guys get to read for free) will be placed.  Sometimes this means slicing and dicing articles to make 'em fit.

Once everything fits, it's time to build the table of contents and the index and the sponsors logo pages. And check that everything that should have a hyper link has one and that they go to the correct location.  To make things more difficult one can link on some text AND on the container holding the text. And the links don't have to be the same. So just clicking a verifying the link jumps to the correct location isn't good enough. Gotta make sure there aren't multiple hyper links attached too!

Oh boy, now it looks like a magazine. But wait! There's more...

Time to render all the video clips. In four formats:  We're using Quick Time format for the embedded edition videos so that's a given, then a windows media video format that gets uploaded to blip.tv (the external video server MRH uses), then render two versions in .mpeg4 for the bonus downloads - a DVD res and a HD res version.  Each render takes from 5 minutes to 3 hours depending on resolution and length of the video clip...

Once the standard versions are uploaded to blip.tv the standard edition needs to link to them.

Ditto for click n spins or other animation thingees.

Finally the standard edition is ready to post for internal review. Time to read it cover to cover. Again. And re-click every hyper link.

Oh wait. We don't receive the news section until just before publishing (otherwise it wouldn't be NEWS anymore?)  So insert the latest version of the pasted up news pages in the 'standard' edition. Go through the links again.  Oops. Almost certainly some news items will have missing links. Others will link to the wrong pages, especially from the Coming Events page.  And some of the links will need to be changed to use the MRH redirect mechanism (when a Sponsoring advertiser is linked).

Back to reviewing the 'entire magazine' again.

But wait, there's more!

Now it's time to modify the indesign master file to make the printer friendly, embedded, and online editions. This involves a bunch of tedious grunt work with Adobe Acrobat Pro. If a mistake is discovered back in the standard edition, it's likely the entire process for creating the embedded, printer friendly, and online versions will have to be redone... Sigh.

Time to review the generated .pdfs for the other versions - and hope they're ok.

Now its time to create all the "Download Issue < whatever> " and reader feedback pages for each article generating all the thumb nail images for them.  Each one of these pages is linked to the online version as well as to the MRH download wizard.

Speaking of the download wizard, more thumbnail creation for the wizard for this issue and generating the data structures to control the wizard....

Finally, when everything else is ready use FTP to upload the various magazine versions to the MRH magazine server primary and mirror sites. Oh yeah, and upload all the bonus content also.  Some of the bonus content can be 200+ megabyte video files.  Get the uploads started and go watch a movie (or even work on the layout?)

Finally, upload the online edition to Issuu and hope that it works right.

If everything is ok, then it's time to make the new issue the default issue for Home and Current issue on the website and add the previous issue to the Back Issues page on the website.

Now here's the incredible part. JOE DID THIS IN THREE EVENINGS AND SATURDAYS A WEEK. In addition to being a full time employee at a major software firm, a dad, a husband, and havng a church family. Until you've done it, you can have no idea how much work is involved to bring each issue of MRH into the light of day. Perhaps I'm lucky, I lost my full-time job 18 months ago leaving lots of time to devote to MRH. Anyway, Joe needs to be very careful in evaluating new features for the magazine to ensure they won't suck up more time than is available for each issue.

So if you happen to think of it, you might let Joe hear that you're thankful for all the work he's put into MRH over the past couple of years, just to make it happen, and then to keep it happening. Thomas Edison said "Genius is 10% inspiration and 90% persperation" - I don't know if that saying was original with him or not. But I do know that all to often if I send email to Joe at two in the morning I get a reply back promptly.

So lets hear it for Mr. Joe. He deserves it!

Hip, hip, Horray!

Charlie (I expect it's time to get off the soapbox now) Comstock - Editor for Issue 7

Great Post!

I'll be one of the first to step up and say a huge THANK-YOU to Joe for all of his Hard work getting this venture off the ground and making it what it is.

Thank-you for all you are giving back to the hobby through your various endeavors!

Thanks also for being the kind, generous, and understanding guy you are and for giving a guy the benefit of the doubt all the time!

Charlie,

Thanks to you too for all of your hard work and for giving Joe a much needed break from the duties of editor and chief!  I knew right away that there was something different about this issue...not because of anything with the magazine being either better or worse nor right or wrong.  Simply because all of the feedback book pages were created under the bear creek log in rather than the joef log in. [smile]

Finally thanks to Patty for the hard work she does and for the sacrifices she makes too!

Having been through the editorial process with Patty for the article I had published, and having some experience editing video, I have a glimmer of an idea just how much work you are talking about.  Believe me, I don't take it lightly!

I admire the selfless commitment the principals have made to MRH. They are not doing this because it's going to make them wealthy.  Rather they are doing it for the love of their hobby.  It just doesn't get much better than that, in my humble opinion!

I am amazed! I knew it took work, but didn't know how much.

One thing I did notice early on was how quickly Joe seems to reply to some threads, and it doesn't seem to make a lot of difference when the post is made!  Does he ever sleep?

Amazed

Myself, being an insomniac, I can say that there are times in the wee hours when Joe seems to be absent...but it doesn't seem to happen very often!

Even with the odd hours I often keep, I have had a number of email replies from Joe arrive after I was sure he was sawing logs for the night!

I also know from past correspondence that Joe regularly gets hundreds of email a day that are MRH related, not to mention what might arrive from his "other" life!  His workload is truly monumental when it's issue crunch time.  To think he pulls it all together in a few evenings and weekends just boggles my mind!

Thanks, guys ...

Thanks, guys ... Charlie left out the last step on the issue release check list: collapse from exhaustion. [wink]

Charlie was a great help this time (he did most of the work), and Patty is already a huge help with all the pasteup and copy reviews managed by her.

Thinking of doing all this monthly won't be possible unless we grow enough we can do this venture full time - so we'll see ...

One last note - this current discussion applies to issue 7, but somehow it ended up in the issue 6 comments! (oops)