Favorite part of the magazine

Favorite part of the magazine now, for me that is. I like Ken's relaxed, informative way he presents his video's

Regards Phil

What's Neat

I enjoy Ken's videos and contribution also.

I would like to encourage Ken to get a lapel mic so his dialog would be more consistent and clear.
A few little tweaks would improve the technical quality greatly.

Model Railroader Subscribers comment by Joe F

Mr. Fugate,

In Ken Patterson's interview, you mentioned that Model Railroader Magazine only had 90,000 subscribers now.  The last I heard earlier this year they had 129,000 by their own count.  Where did you discover they are down to 90,000 now?  

Thanks,

James Wright

http://www.youtube.com/jlwii2000

Look in the magazine

If you look in the January 2015 issue in the back you will find their required official circulation statement (in very small print because the numbers keep shrinking every year). The latest numbers are:

Model Railroader
Readership
Last year, 131,981
This year, 125,108 (includes 9,501 digital issues)
down 6.2%

Subscribers
Last year, 97,940
This year, 93,598
down 4.4%

I think a more important

I think a more important number you need to add to your statistics is out of total subscribers, how many are "active" subscribers.  You total number of subscribers could be down while your active subscribers could be up.  I do know some subscribe then never go back, for whatever reason.  This is a statistic you should know.

Yes but ...

Yes, true, but the paper mags don't have an easy way to know that number, while we do. Since the paper mags don't know this number, but they more emphasize subscribers and total readers (total circulation) - so we compare apples to apples.

We can tell engagement because with our online edition we can determine page by page dwell time. For example, we see a huge dwell time on certain pages - like 20 mins - and when we look, there's a video on that page (duh)!

As for subscribers with us, to opt out all you need to do is click the unsubscribe on any of our weekly emails. We get a very low unsubscribe each week ... Mostly because they lose interest in the hobby or because they're deceased (sad, but true).

Paper mags just can't get those numbers like an all-digital pub can.

Static grass applicator...

Ken, I see you didn't use the home-made static grass applicator in this month's video...reason? You prefer the more expensive one?

Starting a new railroad...I'll let you know when I have some track work finished.

Sorry I'm going to miss the RPM this year, going to be out of  town.

John

Does anyone know where the

Does anyone know where the trucks on the PC covered hopper come from? I have a passive need for roller bearing converted trucks like that.

John Winter static grass..

The commercial gun allows for various screen sizes.. The fly swatter static gun has one screen. So the 5 or 10 MM material Is too big for the fly swatter.  I am not interested in saving money when it comes to scenery. I would rather use what works the first time to get it right every time. KP

Trucks

I'll ask Jeff to give you the answer...............

Best segment so far Ken, lots

Best segment so far Ken, lots of neat stuff. I wish the magazine were even more of this style of reporting. It is just  so entertaining and informative. I can read but showing me is better!!

Regards to Joe's layout, I am sure I speak for most that we all want to see more of the Siskiyou. It's that layout and Joe that started this whole new era. Don't be so humble Joe, show more of the layout.

Steve 

I Remember The Days...

Back in the Stone Age (more than 5 years ago), Joe put out the idea on his forums about the Siskiyou Line, for an all digital model railroad magazine. We all thought it was a fantastic idea. Apparently, we weren't the only ones. 60K unique visitors a month is a number any website would be proud of.

I was happy to see the segment on foam shrinkage. I've been planning to use foam for my (still in the planning stages) layout. I'm not too worried about the shrinkage, because I believe that within 10 years I'll have moved on to a larger layout that would better fill the space I have. Still, it's good to know that there will likely be some maintenance involved. It would also be interesting to see if humidity has an effect. It's much drier here in Denver (most years anyway), than St. Louis.

exterior photography using model cars and real buildings

Michael Paul Smith uses backgrounds of real environments to make the shot as realistic as possible.

https://fstoppers.com/bts/model-maker-turns-toy-cars-nostalgic-life-images-200-point-and-shoot-867

 I think Michael's work is similar to Ken Patterson's photo shoots.  Very ingenious !  Chris