In reading your musings it is

In reading your musings it is easy to see they are well thought out and needed for the magazine to continue. In comparison to the only other magazine I subscribe to this months issue was I believe 269 pages of magazine for MRH and 99 pages of magazine for RMC. I consider both quality magazines and will add there are times when there are issues that do not have a lot of appeal to my narrow focus with each magazine. This is not a knock on either magazine just a comment regarding the narrowness of my focus.

As I have matured in the hobby my interests in time period have gotten narrower and narrower. My geographic area and industries that I am interested in has also become more finely tuned. So when I say appeal I will say the appealing things to me will deal with steel mills, coal mines and a few other industries that could be found along a length of mainline about 25 miles in length.

Does not mean the rest of the magazine that deals with other things are not well done and interesting. They just have limited value to me other than enjoying them for the quality of the work and the presentation in the magazine. I will often rate them as a 5 star because of the quality of the work even though I will not model anything in the time period or that particular area of the country.

Also the magazine shares some techniques and new ways of doing things that are always valuable to consider.

So in reality MRH at a rate of 19.99 for nearly three times as much content is a much better value than RMC at 44.00 per year for a well done print mag of nearly 100 pages.

I will be on the subscribing end of the magazine and consider all the free issues over the years a great bonus. Joe it is a well done magazine and your new book series is excellent as well. You folks have become my hobby publishers of choice.

Now in addition to all of this there is still the rather lightly moderated forum included with the magazine that is often the equal of another magazine all by itself. Clearly the forum would not exist with out the magazine and should be considered along with the magazine in calculating its value. There is nearly real time answers to questions from some very skilled modelers, bloggers that share their activities in the hobby with everyone, and some general open discussion on nearly everything going on in the hobby.

I think the forums easily doubles the value of the magazine. So in reality Joe you likely have priced your product far below what it is actually worth and provided a real bargain to the model railroad community again. I hope the revenue is enough to keep things going along well into the future but I suspect it would still be a bargain at twice the price and there is very little that one can say that about.

Premium subscriptions

With my TrainMasters TV subscription, I only paid $9.99 for the annual subscription. I think this is a great value. Keep up the great work MRH.

Larry

worth every penny no matter

worth every penny no matter what you decide Joe..just don't throw in the towel! 

I Get It And I Will

Going this route will make a great magazine better still. I wonder about the ad placement part however. Is it because of the shrinking of the hobby(Yes, here I go again!)? In my area now we only have two hobby shops but only one that I use regularly because the other one specializes in Lionel/MTH O Scale. In the Chicago Area where we once had maybe 15 hobby shops that sold model railroading supplies I think, we are down to 6? I am sure in other parts of the world there are less than that or none at all. I usually don't buy online UNLESS it's something I think I need/want and the local shop can't get it(those Trainlife Depressed Flatcars being my last online purchase).

Like Rob in Texas, I pretty much only read this magazine and RMC now. There was a time that even RMC was not on my reading list but the way it is now, I have been buying it at my local shop.

Will it be possible to fill 300 pages a month?  Probably especially with graphics or more detailed articles. Keep up the great work!

Ad shrinkage

If you research the vendors who used to advertise with us but no longer do, you will find:

1. Most of them are still in business
2. Most of them got known through MRH but now promote directly via FB and YT, along with emails

So no, it's not because they went out of business, it's because they found other ways that worked just as well as MRH and are cheaper.

Notice, one strategy is to use MRH ads to get your business known, then transition to FB and YT from there, removing MRH as the middleman.

So it's not the businesses going away because of a shrinking hobby, instead it's that they found new approaches that work just as good (or better).

So you can't blame a shrinking hobby on this one -- in fact if you talk to those businesses who are leveraging FB and YT well, they will tell you the hobby is doing just fine. If anything, it's growing among young folks -- if you look online, that is.

Saw it coming

Let me say that I have been a subscriber to the free addition for over 8 years and I have read almost every issue. This magazine is a worth while mag to read and have enjoyed the free issues. It is sad that your magazine has reached a point where you must now charge but that seems to be the way of most everything now days. Cost is always a factor and for the moment I will have to decide on whether to continue with the free part or subscribe. I am retired and living on a limited income so money can at times be a real issue. In the end I probably will subscribe but I will have to see how it goes. Good luck and I hope you guys can continue to produce a quality magazine for all to enjoy.

Thanks

Submitting Layout Designs

I guess this wasn't clear to me, but where are we supposed to submit our layout designs?

EDIT: Figured it out, sorry about that

Layout design submission ...

Press the button at the bottom of the layout design announcement page and select “Contest Entry” in the dropdown on the web page that comes up ...

The entry needs to be a track plan and an article with illustrations and captions describing your design. Put everything into a folder, load the folder up onto a file share like DropBox or Google Drive, get a share link, then paste the share link into the comments section of your entry.

Worth every penny, and then some

I am amazed you made it this long with only ads for support, offering this superb level of content for free to the end user. MRH is BY FAR the best of what I call the "Big 3" of model railroad publications (MRH, MRC and MR), so for about 1/2 the price of either of the other two it's still one heck of a deal for even more content. MR in particular is a sad shadow of what it once was, but I still support them - they got me into this hobby as a kid 40 years ago. The most recent one is more of a pamphlet than a magazine.

One thing I will beg for though - PLEASE continue to allow easy downloading of the entire magazine. My biggest gripe with the other two (and not sure MRC even still does digital, they did before the ownership change) is that MR only has an absolutely awful online digital version where you have to use a specific app platform to read the magazine with no way to save it locally. MRC had something similar but you could kind of get it to print to PDF poorly - and I think I lost a couple years when the ownership changed. I went back to print subscriptions for both of them because of this. But I infinitely prefer digital - storing many years of magazines takes up too much space, and I have summer and winter homes, so not buying two of each means inevitably what I want to look at is in the wrong state! I did buy the MR archive DVDs but again due to ridiculous copyright concerns they are in a format that makes them much harder to use than they should be. I don't get it - if you pay the same price for the printed magazine you can lend it to anyone you want just as easily, but the digital version is so precious they have to make it hard to use to prevent that? Just my minor rant for the day.

Joe, keep up the good work. Also, my new layout in FL is totally a TOMA setup! A 6sqft micro switching layout in HO  that is going to expand around 3/4 of the walls of my bedroom eventually.

Kevin Rhodes

Port Charlotte, FL, Westbrook, ME - modelling the Maine Central in the Sunshine State

Downloading the new magazine

You will get a special email that has the just for you download links for each issue when it's released. Hopefully, it will remain easy.

Speaking of the new magazine ... meet MRH Master Modeler

Speaking of the new magazine, people are getting confused that MRH will no longer be free, so to minimize confusion, we've decided to separate the two magazine versions by renaming the new one and giving it a new name.

We're now calling the new paid magazine MRH Master Modeler. Same concept as before -- it includes all the ads and articles from the free magazine, plus another ~150 pages of premium articles also.

Here's how the new logo and covers will look, making it look noticeably different from the free MRH magazine, yet maintaining a family appearance:

Regarding the Oct issue ...

The Forums?

I assume the forums will only be available to the subscribers.  That alone may make me choose to be a subscriber since I have really enjoyed that portion of the magazine over the last few years.  It certainly gave me something to do after last year's heart attack.  I'm not particularly interested in TMTV since videos were not part of my learning process so I rarely ever look at even You tube videos.  Joe, I certainly appreciate everything you have done for the hobby and I think while the future is somewhat cloudy I think we all will weather the storm (TLW).  I know for certain that you have made an honest attempt to maintain things as they were and I don't have any problem with your having to renege on the "forever free" concept.

Robert

I like it!

Well done!

I'm not sure about the name....

"Master Modeler" is going to strike some as elitist. I liked "Premium" much better.

I don't think Joe has suggested that the forum would be limited to subscribers of the new mag.

Sounds awfully close to the

Sounds awfully close to the NMRA’s newly trademarked Master Model Railroader (TM).

GS

Forums and forever free ...

We prefer to keep the forums open for reading, but require registering on the website to post. All forum threads will remain open for now.

That's precisely why we're spinning off a totally new magazine with a new title that's not free to end the confusion over free vs not free. The free MRH remains.

On the free MRH, the idea has always been to fund the amount of content ads would pay for. Most reasonable people understand this was implied in the forever free promise -- MRH remains free, but always sized to match ad revenue.

So strictly speaking, it's not a renege -- did you ever expect us to irresponsibly run the free MRH so it would way outstrip ad revenue and bankrupt us?

Master Modeler and TrainMASTERS TV

"Sounds awfully close to the

Also gonna bring up a lot of Seinfeld jokes....DaveB 

Skill Level...

Models are usually sold by the "Skill Level"... I don't think that phrase is owned by anyone... maybe MRH can do something with that?

"Model Railroad Hobbyist: Skill Level Plus"? "Skill Level +"?

No number by "Skill Level", and it won't sound elitist for those concerned about "Master" in the title...

Just spitballing here... take it with a grain of salt... (Kosher salt though... it is Rosh Hashanah after all)

Oh, and L'shanah tova!

 

Master Modeler?

To me that is a turn off. Why would a casual modeler want to look at a magazine meant for Master Modelers? That is what the title implies. The title implies it contains high quality, very complex, extremely fine scale modeling. That is way above my pay scale. Anything less than that will be disappointing to the subscribers. I know it is the same publication, but I was interested in the" premium" addition, but not the Master Modeler publication. I think that will narrow your subscribers.

MRHmm

Hmm. I have to agree that I like MRH Premium better, but if it has to be MRH Master Modeler, then from a graphics point of view, may I suggest ditching the italic version of the MRH logo and keep the original MRH logo with the new title? That way you are using the same consistent MRH logo on TMTV, MRH and MRHp, er... MRHmm.

Another new mag request (I'm in sooner or later)

Warflight, you beat me!      Happy New Year to all for whom it applies!

Let us resolve to finish the  kit / model  on the bench now, and improve the layout!

Re: Next Gen magazine (whatever name it becomes)  Could there be a website library or cross reference of prototype drawings (rolling stock/ locos/ trackside structures)?   Seems the print mags are shedding or reducing the availability of such.

Oh, the 'sooner or later' refers to my short-term budget...   by year end,  I'm in!

Regards, Joe, and long live MRH!

Are you sure about this?

I hope this isn’t the final decision.  The confusion with the NMRA program and the elitist connotation derived from the words “Master Modeler” spell a potential PR nightmare.

Having two different magazines with two different amounts of content and two different names will automatically generate comparisons.  Less vs. more.  No matter what name you go with, one will be perceived as MRH Light and the other MRH.  (Because that’s what it IS!)

For the paid version, perhaps consider: MRH Complete, MRH ‘the Works Edition’, Total MRH, MRH+,  MRH Deluxe, Maximum MRH,  MRH Extended...