Only if Optional

I'm not particularly interested in this concept.  I would prefer that it be optional so only those who desire/need it would pay the "up charge".

my 2 cents

Joe,

I'll shoot straight here: I do like the request feature, although there are only so much topics someone could ask for until they become way too specific. When too specific, the request really should belong in the forums IMO. For example: "How can I create my own DCC keep alives?" versus "Can we do an article about connecting a Digitrax DS44 stationary decoder to a Digikeijs DR5000 command station and show how to use them to control a tortoise switch machine and a Rapido uncoupler using my Xpressnet throttle?". How would you find that right balance? How would people get feedback on the do-ability of the requested articles?

The live video suggestion: I wouldn't be interested in that at all as I fear it would go the way of a podcast. I'd rather read the concise answer on half a page to a page in next months edition. For example, the What's Neat video each month is borderline interesting, especially if I read the segment in the magazine and got the gist of the topics discussed. I've watched an episode and a half of the What's neat podcast then tuned out. Podcasts, to me, seem to me too much banter/dicsussion and not straight to the point on topics. Time is valuable. I'm more inclined to try a subscription to TMTV on top of my Running Extra subscription.

What is your goal

I purchased one edition of "Running Extra" but "personally" did not see anything that made me want to go with the paid edition over MRH.  "I find the ads in MRH a good hobby resource but understand these have dwindled over the years"

Your proposal would not make me want to subscribe and "nothing personal" sounds kind of gimmicky.  Also not sure how a price increase in such a short time-span would be taken.  

Curious what your goal is here.  If it's to boost low sales of running extra, not sure if this is the way to do it and sounds like a lot of extra overhead and time on your part.  

I will tell you, if I "did not" have the option of the free version of MRH, I would pay a small subscription to keep getting it versus walking away.   But because there is a free option, there is no incentive for me to go the subscription route. 

"Maybe it's time to consider offering one low priced subscription magazine, including ads, and retiring MRH altogether" 

I think most folks get times change and sometimes business models have to change with it. 

Joe

Stay focused

I agree, actually. Too much rambling and not enough focus in many unscripted live videos.

My idea is something different. We would go in with an agenda up front and work to stay on topic and get to the point quickly.

There's a difference between what I'm thinking and What's Neat. Ken's weekly video podcast is primarily a hobby news podcast. That's not what I'm thinking here.

I'm thinking strictly how-to with audience interaction on that how-to. In other words, drive out the points more clearly thanks to audience feedback. For that to work, we would have to point people at Q&A forms on the web to bring up off-topic questions -- if they merit it we would cover the OT questions in a different live video.

Also, end the video when we're done, no more than 30 min max, much less if possible. I think that's possible if we stay focused and go in with a very tight coverage plan up front.

hmmm.

I think I'd rather see the time and energy for this put into TMTV.
TMTV live anyone?

Live video

Okay, so the question then is just where it lives. I'm very interested in more live videos. I can see live TMTV video being more the focus, then.

But I still am interested in making Running Extra a magazine you can request articles for and we will deliberately go out and commission them if it makes sense to do so. Mostly broad appeal requests, of course, but once in a while we might do a very narrow request just because. In those cases, we would highlight the general take-aways from the very specific article.

Reality is almost every very narrow article can have some generally useful take-aways as well.

Video and Off Topic questions

I do believe that even when going in with an agenda, it would be extremely easy to go off script. Especially if you want to make it interactive. It's not just off topic questions that you'd have to either ignore or actively refer to the Q&A web form for later answering. Even on topic questions and understanding them (or setup time to) properly before answering can drag out the short live video.

How about dealing with the moment of doing such live videos? Finding the right day and time slot can be a great issue for those in Europe or with other activities in the evenings. This would then affect their ability to provide live input, (potentially) diminishing the (their) subscription value. For example, I myself try to attend the weekly Free-mo live chat on Sunday evenings at 8-10pm eastern, and I've made it only once in the last year or so.

Technical question: how would you serve this video content? YouTube live stream? How would it then be kept private so only Running Extra subscribers would see this? Assuming you'd want it kept private?

Just exploring ideas

Just exploring ideas here. As I think about it more, it makes the most sense for the meaty and on-point live video to be for TMTV members.

We could do the occasional live YT video as well, but it makes the most sense there for it to be a generally available video to the web at large.

The TMTV venue makes the most sense for value-add live videos -- and it fits better too. It's a video subscription service, so why not live videos there too? TMTV already has the paywall and the new TMTV website we hope to roll out this summer has live video capability built-in. So that's a no-brainer as to limiting access to the value add live video.

I am thinking the RE value add is a formalized and easy way to request topics and us working to get them covered -- and keeping you updated on the article progress, sneak peeks, etc if we pick your request to pursue.

P.S. Thanks for putting up with me throwing out half-baked ideas and thinking through them as part of your feedback.

My 2 cents

I participate in live modeling videos on FB frequently. I love them! They are educational as you can ask someone a question on what they are doing right then. They can sometimes ramble a bit but I don't mind that. It is a fun community of people that chat on the video. I can say that there are always WAY more just quietly watching than interacting and I am not surprised by that . I think that is the norm. The best live feeds always have someone watching chat and interacting there where they can call attention to the person on the video when needed and just answer the questions without interrupting the flow of the video for things they can answer.

As evidenced by this thread already, you can't please everyone. I am not sure about keeping my TMTV and Running Extra subscription when it is up. I personally enjoy live videos far more than the videos you are producing now and I frequently hit YT as a secondary because the whole shooting style is so different. I don't care about a polished looking studio and such, I just want to see real stuff being done. I care much less about interviewish type stuff where something is shown, but not directly demo'd. I want to see  If you go with live videos where something is being actually done then you can pretty much count on my renewing.

live stream, RE articles

To quote a quote attributed to several different people - "I apologize for such a long letter, I didn't have time to write a short one."  Editing adds a lot of value, and takes a lot of time.  Live streams don't get that benefit.  Although if well enough planned and rehearsed that might not make too much difference.  To put it differently, I suspect it's possible to do a really good live stream, but I have yet to see one so I remain a bit skeptical.

One type of article I would like to see more of is gory details on an industry from the perspective of operating it on a model railroad.  What does the prototype ship and/or receive?  In what kinds of cars?  In what ratios?  (e.g. 5 veg oil cars for every corn syrup car with a car of plastic pellets every couple weeks).  What pattern are cars released in (e.g. empty outbound cars are always at the switch end, or cars are emptied apparently randomly, or ?).  Do all those similar looking hoppers of glass ingredients need to be lined up in a particular order before shoving into the track so they can be easily unloaded in the order the factory needs to use the material?  When respotting cars that had to be moved to pull outbounds, do the respots need to go back in the same place?  Same spot on an adjacent track closer to the building?  Anywhere that's convenient?  Information like that.  I think for freelance modelers very detailed information on any industry is more interesting and potentially more useful than vague generalities about a class of industry.  I'm sold on the RE subscription, but if you had an article like that in every issue you could charge me double for RE and I'd cheerfully pay up.  Heck, maybe triple.

Ok

Live video topics?

Okay, any burning live video topics you'd like to see?

Ken Rice

I really like Ken Rice's suggestion with one additional suggestion - current actual models that would be prototypical or good stand-in.  I think there are a lot of real world operators, past or present, on here that could be a significant resource for pulling this stuff together.  

The caveat is it's a vast landscape to do it.  A coal mine in the early 1900s will be different than one in the 40s and 50s, different again in the 70s and likely different again in the 2000's, not to mention potentially different in different locales.  It would likely be a lot of work to cover off all that territory and if you left out an era or two, you'd have some unhappy people.  I would start with smaller industries and see how it is received.  It really is building on the TOMA concept in some ways - how to model this industry on a 2'x6' module or whatever, and literally years and years of articles for different industries that could be covered.

But to the main topic at hand, I agree with Bill on the live videos - putting them on TMTV.  Really, when I first heard the MRH concept and utilizing digital media, TMTV is ultimately a lot of what I pictured.  MRH has become much more just a digital magazine with little extra media.  It still has the benefits of having larger, more detailed articles than a print mag, but it's still essentially a digital magazine and not much more.  Still lots of good content, but I'm not sure its exactly what I thought you envisioned back in 2008.  From that side of it, I like the idea of including more video stuff with MRH, but I'm just not sure in my brief time thinking about it what specifically would add value that I don't already get at TMTV.  Further, do you then undermine TMTV if you have a pile of video here?  I don't know. 

I will say this, if I had to choose one or the other (I don't, but just go with it), I would take my TMTV subscription every time.  I always look forward to the new videos there and watch them fairly soon after they are posted.  I don't have that same "gotta have it now" with my MRH subscription because I get much more out of video than I do the written page.  Just how I am, others prefer the print.  I'll stew on it some more and see if I come up with any suggestions.

There's a time factor in watching video versus reading

One thing to remember about consuming procedural videos, especially live videos, is that they have a pretty standard rate of information delivery.  It's difficult to speed up that rate (by increasing the frames per second) compared to visually skimming text and photos, and skipping chunks of a video can still result in more time spent to find the pertinent section than you would spend by skimming and rereading.  (An example is the old FedEx commercials in the 90s where they had somebody reading the commercial at breakneck speed.)

When I was working as a technical writer on manufacturing processes, I found that adding video of how to do a series of steps did add a great deal to the viewer's ability to absorb new procedures.  But accessing just the right portion of  procedure required a great deal of work on the part of the video's creator.  You still had to have a pretty scripted sequence of steps, but you also had to have list of those steps and links to where they appeared in the video.  It took nearly as much time to extract that information from the video as it did to put the rest of the video together, and it was nowhere nearly as quick as some people first thought.  On the other hand, if you did it carefully, a traditional text and photo procedure just about fell out of the video process with very little extra effort.

Janet N.

Real proper reviews

Top three industries

A useless but completely truthful answer - the ones that have some sort of interesting operational twist that I’m not aware of yet.

A couple localish examples I’ve wondered about:

A small chemical distributor.  An example I know of but know nothing about - Harcross Cemicals, 8 Capitol St, Nashua, NH 03063.  They receive a small number of tank cars.  Is it all the same stuff?  Is switching it the simple pull everything to go, set a couple new cars in, or is it more complicated by respots?

Hendrix Wire and Cable in Milford, NH.  They have a track alongside the building that receives a bunch of resin pellet hoppers, presumably to make the insulating sheath for the wires.  Is there different grades of resin for different cables?  Does the order of the cars matter when they’re spotted?  I’m guessing it doesn’t but I’m not sure.  The the most interesting thing is that at the northwest corner of the building there is a small separate building angled specifically so two short tracks enter it, each just long enough to hold a single car.  Seems pretty clear something needs to be unloaded in a more controlled environment.  But what?  And from what type of car?  And what is the ratio of those cars to the others?  I’ve asked on local railfan sites but nobody seems to know.

Washington Mills in North Grafton, MA.  For a number of years one of two industries that kept the Grafton and Upton railroad alive (The G&U is a old shortline which almost faded away but is now rebounding, rebuilding track, adding customers, acquiring locos, etc).  Anyway, they make and recycle abrasives.  They’ve got a hopper unloading spot outside the building, which judging by photos sometimes (often?) has a single 2 bay covered hopper than presumably contains the raw material.  Their track extends into and through a section of their building, and in some photos a boxcar is visible spotted inside.  Is that for shipping out sacks of the abrasive?  For receiving used abrasive for recycling?  Both?  What’s the frequency and ratio of the inbound and outbound stuff?  The building by the way is on the outside of an almost 90 degree curve, with the spur coming off one of the tangents - you couldn’t ask for a better prototype industry to stick in the corner of a layout.

An example of something I happen to know a little about and would never have expected:

Catania Spagna in Ayer, MA.  At the time I first came across it it was a modest sized building with two tracks alongside each capable of holding 6 or 7 tank cars, with a rack between the track with pipes and hoses.  Now there’s a third track, all three are in an enclosed shed, and they’ve added on to the building.  They’re a distributor of vegetable oils, they get the oil in tank cars and package it in large containers for restaurants and smaller bottles and packets for consumers.  What makes it interesting is that they handle a number of different types and grades of vegetable oil.  Including olive oil among other things.  So although they do have storage tanks in the building, they can’t just unload all the cars in the order they received them and be done with it, they unload the cars based on what’s in them, the demand for whatever that is, and how much storage they have for that particular oil.  So when the railroad switches them out they need to cherry pick out the empties, and they can put the respots and loads wherever they fit.  It’s a lot more interesting and time consuming than you’d think just looking at a couple tracks of apparently identical tank cars.  The cars that get respotted have their valves closed of course but often not the covering caps put back over them, so the centerline of the track gets a bit oily.  Add to that that their siding comes off the loop track for a flour mill and the resulting grain spillage down the centerline and it makes for an interesting mess!

The point is, a good percentage of the prototype industries that I happened to be able to find out a little one way or another about seem to have much more interesting operation than you might expect without knowing the details.  I suspect there are a lot more interesting details out there it would at the least be fascinating to know about, and quite possibly influence what industries get added to later phases of my layout.  I’m modeling present day so that’s what I’m most interested in, but I find any details about how prototype industries actually interact with the railroad in any era interesting.

My thoughts

While I am happy to pay the additional cost for RE in it's current format, I may be a little wary to pay more for something I may not use. The format of RE as a magazine addition works for me while the video format may belong better in TMTV where this can be a separate subscription.

Gary I.

I think you have a great idea.

Yes, you do have a great idea.  I see it as a group of people working creativity on an idea.  I am going to stop there.

On the negative comments - ?

Mike Lee

While I’m happy to pay for

While I’m happy to pay for RE, not so much the video idea. As has already been pointed out, most live streams I’ve seen, even technical, how to’s, tend to ramble and get off topic very quickly, especially when there is a live chat component. All of them would benefit hugely from a savage editing to cut out the fluff. And I live in Australia, which is about as unfriendly a time zone as you can get when it comes to live streams from the US or Europe, so I’d be watching all of these after the fact.

I think it’s a good idea to get reader input to build a wish list of articles for RE, but that should be considered standard operating procurer, not a value add that requires a price hike. If you need to raise the price for other reasons, then so be it, and we the readers can decide whether RE is still a good value proposition or not. 

Ideas for videos

Joe,

I am easy to please. Even if I am not particularly interested in an aspect of the video I will likely still watch it because there is almost certainly something worth taking away from it that I can use and I almost certainly won't know what that is until I see it...

That said...here are some ideas:

Take a smallish structure, already built, and add it to an area on a layout. Not a huge area, maybe a square foot or less. Basic scenery done is fine but how do you seat the structure in and then scenic it up to blend in with what is already done. This would be a good venue to do some product reviews as well. One of the main aspects I like about live videos is that you get to see when something goes wrong and exactly how it went wrong. That happens to me all the time. Even better is when you get to see how to fish it out of toilet and recover. 

Heck,  maybe do a small segment of videos getting the basic scenery in place even and just build successive videos on that. Break out some innovative techniques and new products and give it a go. Again, a total failure is worth as much as a complete success often, if not more so.

So some structure builds. Small cheap kits are great! I participated in a group build that had the liver streamers building the same kit in different ways. Wildly different techniques and some very interesting that really delivered neat effects when done. We all built our own structure as well. When done it was really impressive to see photo's of what everyone had done. It was great at fostering a sense of community, a kit manufacturer prospered and you personally had something when you were done. Heck, you could just do a video with multiple pieces of wood covering paint effects, stains, distressing...sky's the limit. Just don't use swap outs unless you are eliminating drying time. Show me start to finish how you do it.

Basically I get the

Basically I get the impression that what you're suggesting is sort of a fast-response version of "Ask MRVP," and a different way to ask what you frequently ask anyway - "What articles do you want to see?" (Maybe I'm missing something).

A truly interactive magazine could be so much more...

Allow readers to append brief write-ups and photos of their modeling efforts / techniques on the article subject directly to the on-line version of the magazine article. Readers click a button labeled "See how others have done it" (or some such) to see the added content. You wouldn't have to add that to the downloaded version of the magazine; keep it just on-line. It would be kind of a merging of forum topics about the articles (which we have now) with the magazine itself.

Another idea - Hold live stream videos with the author whenever possible, scheduled prior to publication so that the article carries the live stream date and time. The author would be able to answer viewer questions about relating to the article subject. Wouldn't have to be long - 15 to 30 minutes, maybe. I don't know if there is an easy way to limit access to the live stream to subscribers, but I know little about live streaming.

There are probably more, and perhaps easier, things that can be implemented for enhanced interactivity.

One thing I would NOT want to see are more commercials for specific products masquerading as "how-to" videos. Way too many of those on TMTV already. They belong on the vendor's website and/or YouTube (like Tim Warris's Fast Tracks does), not on a Video service I'm paying for.

I like that

Mark said:

I quite like that idea, actually.  Not sure how difficult it would be to actually execute, but it would be interesting to see how it goes.

A good idea

I like that idea as well!

Vendor videos

TrainMasters TV from day one has always had vendor presentations in mind as part of the offering. But the idea isn't just infomercial marketing hype, rather it's how to use their product along with helpful hints and tips for any similar kind of product.

Some vendors don't listen, though, and if their content is mostly hype and not how-to's then we don't ask them back.

But stop and think about it -- the hobby consists of products we all buy and use. Who should know how to get the most out of a product better than the vendor? If we're going to buy and use hobby products, why not have the vendor themselves come and share their vision for how the product is to best be used?

Yes, if it's not a product you're interested in, then the segment won't be that useful. But please allow for other modelers to get value out of the product insights -- and let's hope they do the same for you when a vendor shows you the ropes on a product YOU would like to know how to use better.