Publisher's Editorial

Joe,

I'm Russ Bellinis, my other hobby is a 1987 Firebird Trans Am.  I first heard about a similar online publication for the car hobby called Winding Road and started subscribing to it in the same way about 4 years ago.  I have wondered since becoming a reader of Winding Road, when someone would catch on that the same thing would work for model railroading.  I've just read your editorial and am starting to read the rest of the magazine.  Good luck on this new venture, I hope it is soon a monthly instead of quarterly publication!

Russ Bellinis

Congrats Joe on a successful launch.  I enjoyed your editorial and am looking forward to diving into the rest of issue number 1!

It's going to be a late night!

It's just really great to see the vision you first described to me over a year ago become reality.  Here's to a long, long run!

Come on guys.  Support MRH advertisers and before long this will be a monthly rather than quarterly Mediazine!

I have just read the first isue of MRH.
I like the way the magazin is build and all the interactive stuff.
You have done a realy good job.
Thanks for that.
I look forward to what you are publishing in the future.

Joe,

Great Job,  Please create index for issues of MRH so 10 years form now we can go to a search engine and find the info and go right to the article.

My RR is the Grande Pacific, see MRH Blog.  I would like to wirte articles for you, ie. Helixes How to Build and what your need to think about before.  Another way to do secenry and not use any plaster, see pictures on blog.

Please advise on how to proceed.

Arthur Houston (ART)

ahouston3@charter.net

Joe and the team,

Fantastic fresh approach to model railroad magazine publishing.  I love it!

Like the easy on the eye background and print colours, not tiring at all.

The content is varied and interesting and presented in such a way that i feel I DO want to read every page.

Congratulations from Staffordshire, England.

LEIGHDRUMS

Back more years than I care to remember, I was reading the recaps of conferences at the 50th Anniversary of Model Railroader and one of the panel discussed the future of the model rail press as an electronic medium. Being the Neanderthal I am, I thought "yeah, when a pig flies..."  Today, the pig went past the window.  Between this and publishers providing back issues of their magazines on CD-ROM's, I may never have to dread moving magazines again!  The staff you have empaneled is second to none.  Thank you for an outstanding publication and best wishes for many, many years of success!

JP

Edgewater, MD

Hi there to Joe and the Team,

Thanks for this publication... This is a very good start and looks really great and I hope this mag in particular and the hobby in general to prosper,

Regards from Australia

Trevor  www.xdford.digitalzones.com for your interest!

I'm a model railroader who's day job is in the I.T. industry.  I spend most of my time (when I'm not gluing my fingers together) working with today's Internet media.  Most publishers and authors just don't get it.  The feel they are competing with the Internet or that they must only use the Internet to sell old media.  Quite a few believe that every person who reads something they write must pay them directly.  While I suppose there is nothing wrong with that, today's media has finally evolved to an advertising supported industry much like television of old.  Ad supported content reaches far more viewers and benefits all parties. Context sensitive advertising helps me find products that interest me.  Plus the ad dollars support information I find useful. 

This issue of Model Railroad Hobbyist is a wonderful read.  The format and distribution models are excellent and yes, I have already visited two of the sponsors.  (Gotta get me some of those pre-wired phone poles!)  Please keep up the good work.  You have a big fan here.

Len.

This is something else! Noe more hopeless paperstacks. (I gave them away years ago by the way.) Exciting new possibilities, a nice readable lay-out for the screen.

Interesting content even for those of us who are not so familiar with, or interested in, US-trains.

Congratulations on this fine idea.  I have jsut started to read it, but from what I can see this is an excellent format.  Great job Joe.

WOW what a great job you and all involved have done Joe !

Thanks to everyone for their efforts !

This is the future of Model Railroad Publishing !

Congratulations on a masterful undertaking.  You have fired the first gun of a publishing revolution.  This issue is even better than I had hoped - more creative presentations and more imaginative use of dynamic graphics - even the ads are more informative and more interesting than print ads.

Your skills in computer technlogy are as impressive as your achievements in model railroading technology.

I look forward to subsequent issues.

Art Armstrong

Joe,

I'm like you; I'm very much a visual guy. But I gave up on the traditional (read print) magazines years ago as content lagged (to my taste anyway), editorial quality (readability and grammar) fell, and costs went up and up.

The first of these is a very personal issue. You will not be able to keep everybody happy all of the time. As many have said in the printed press you learn several things in each issue. This is true, but at what cost? And why should I pay for a magazine that was more than fifty percent advertisements? This was my problem with all of the print magazines. Now we could start a debate about printing and distribution costs, but what’s the point? You have solved the problem because you neither print nor (snail) mail anything! You still have production costs, but you'd have them anyway.

So congratulations on thinking outside of the box! Somebody had to break the mold and it appears that you have done it. I applaud and truly hope that you can maintain the high standards that you set for yourself and your magazine. You have started a great adventure. If you can continue to meet your standards, pay your staff, pay your bills, and make a reasonable profit you will have revolutionized the publishing industry. You'll know that you have been successful when others imitate you and there are offers to buy-you-out.
 

Richard Johnston

Those wishing to imitate MRH are going to have their work cut out for them.  I believe Joe and his staff have set the bar quite high.

Everyone on the MRH team deserve a big round of applause for their efforts on issue number one!  Can't wait for #2 to arrive.  It's a good thing we have a monthly newsletter!

What you have done is wonderful. Modellers from around the world can now view what is going on in our hobby.

Keep up the great work for it is indeed a fantastic job.

Jim

I enjoyed the magazine! My only regret is that I have to wait three more months..

Chris

Loved the Mediazine and still not done with it yet.  Luckily we do have newsletters to look forward to in the interim.

Checking my e-mail and came across message that first issue was ready to download, so I did so.  I was blown away by the result.  Your magazine is fabulous, and I had subscribed to others for years, and let all the subscriptions lapse. 

Wish you all success and looking forward to future issues.  You have combined good publishing with modern media in a great way.  Thanx!

Fred

Webster's may like gage, but I sure don't. The language takes a big enough beating as it is without dumbed down spelling.

There was a bit of a discussion on that internally as well.

We're adopting simpler spellings (that are still approved of by Webster) based on expert advice for documents to be read on a computer screen.

Basically, the recommendation is: simpler is better. The eye reads it faster - and giving the eye something of a break when reading a glowing screen appears to win out in the eye studies done of reading on a screen.

I agree, it looks a bit odd since it's not as common - but in time most will get used to it. It certainly is easier to spell ... now is that ua or au?

I am amazed!! It must be gratifying to see such a revolutionary vision come to fruition. Stunning is not an overstatement - CONGRATULATIONS!!!

Great first run, kudos to everyone.

I do have a request recommendation though - Maybe due to it's format, I kept finding myself wanting to clickon photos to enlarge, only to find it advancing the page.

Any chance of having the photo's blow up? This seems desireable especially in the how to articles.

Thanks again for your efforts.

Cheers!

Of course it also means that searches won't find the article. Anned  (As in Anne) et (e as in each) still kumez doan tu thy phackt that inglich iz erreggyoular.

I think you're going to find people pussling auvre the wordz more.

If search engines matter the most, then we need to spell it both ways, and add in a few common mispellings as well ...

The Lite and the Narrow
Narrow gauge musings

In this column we discuss the narrow gage railroads ... and when you think narrow guage - think MRH!

Now that should make for some fun reading - but the search engines will find us better than ever.

(Just kidding ...)

Joe,

Congratulatios for this first issue. I really enjoy it and expect the following issues to be of the same quality. I like this new interactive format very much.

All the best. Hope I can contribute in the future.

Jean-Louis simonet (from France)

visit traiN'ternet : http://www.trainternet.fr

Joe,

MRH is a great idea and Issue 1 is superbly execuited. I enjoyed all aspects of it.

I know this is very early in the game but I am looking to be a long time subscriber. As I collect more and more issues, I will want to go back and find specific articles. My memory is not what everyone thinks it should be and I forget what articles are in which issues. Have you thought about some sort of running index of all articles in all issues? It could be on-line or it could be an downloable index shell that could be updated with each new issue. I often wish all publishers would help and index their publications.

Frank Martin

Agree entirely. Gauge it should be.

Michael

Frank, we will do better than that ... once the issue is about 6 months old we plan to post each article as a separate PDF link off the comments page. Once we do that Google will find it and index it.

Then if you go into Google and type something like:

Tom Miller trains

Our issue 1 article should come up as a link.

Eventually, the result of this approach will be an ever-growing library of Google indexed content for model railroading.