.

I agree

I love the magazine. I will always have a subscription. I know what my money supports, and I support that. But, sometimes it feels like RE articles are way long, at least we got the article on the logs, with a how-to. Usually get one or two of those a month. the one monthly column, is always very long. 'limited modeler', I read it, but it isnt my era, and it seems very similar month to month. I appreciate it, but it is a bit redundant for me. I am sure I am in the minority. And, I am certainly not complaining. I love RE and the free mag also. I can only afford one subscription, and my hobby, at a time. And its an easy choice which mag to subscribe to. 

Force

Love how people will find anything to complain about. 

Nobody is forcing you to read all 20 pages?   Maybe just read 5 pages at a time and let it soak in HAHAHA

or just read MR, its 3 pages of the same thing every month

Copy editors hack content every month

Our copy editor (Mike Dodd) and Assistant Editor (James Regier) and of course myself -- we all are hacking content out of submissions every month. We throw out photos as well.

The goal with RE is 7-8 articles each issue and each issue should be 90-100 pages. Every issue of RE has two shorties (25% of the total article count, BTW): Publisher's Welcome and Aha Moment -- they're both two pages each. I find it's a challenge to say what I want to say in just two pages, but they're a lot of meat in a small space. We find not many modelers know how to keep it short and meaty.

With 4 pages already spoken for in RE, that leaves 5-6 articles for the other 86-96 pages ... That's an average of 15-16 pages per article. If we run a couple shorter articles, then the other articles need to be longer to make up for it, which explains the ~20 pages in more than a few cases.

We do run shorter articles, but they often get lower ratings. Our readers seem to appreciate depth.

So let me flip the question around -- would you still want to pay for a 50 page Running Extra that had a lot of short articles in the 7-10 pages each range? Or a 100 page MRH with 35 pages of ads? 

Think MR articles with more photos, most likely.

@MEC Fan

Did you read my comment? I specifically said 'I am not complaining' or where I said 'I can only afford one subscription, and my hobby, at a time. And its an easy choice which mag to subscribe to'. I read it cover to cover the day it comes out. I was just offering an opinion, in which I admit(again, see post above), I am probably in the minority. 

This month example

My two favorite articles this month (September 2021) are 16 and 32 pages in length, respectively:

Jim Six...Limited Modeler 36' Wooden Boxcars

Tony Thompson...Getting Real: Tips for Modeling Traffic on your layout

I rated both as "Awesome"

Would have liked the 36' boxcar article to have had even more data on how long these cars were in use in interchange traffic, given the need to convert brake systems subsequent to 1953.  I would love to use some of these Accurail cars prototypically in the summer of 1954, my modeling period.

I have yet to find data on that on my own to support the goal.

In summary, I feel the RE portion of the monthly magazine to which I subscribe is the place to do in depth dives into things of interest to many of us.

One other thought ...

And yes..photos are invaluable

Keep it up.

Let me illustrate ...

Let's compare an MRH spread to a paper magazine spread (Model Railroader in this case).

Note how much more real estate we dedicate to large photos. Also note our text is larger as well.

We do all this very deliberately to make on-screen reading a lot easier. I would guess our two page spread content would fit into about half a page in a paper magazine like MR. Nothing wrong with that, it's just two different publishing models.

So in short, our articles run longer because we use a lot of bigger photos and because we make the text larger so it's easier to read on the screen. If you were to shrink down the photos and make the text a lot smaller, the articles would be a lot shorter. So to a significant degree, the "longer" comes from more photos and a larger font so it's easier to read on a screen.

Appreciation for MRH

I for one really appreciate the length of the articles in MRH. I still occasionally pick up a MR and often wonder why something wasn't brought out more in-depth in an article. Their layout stories are way too short on words and photos. I have some of their old scratch building stories for both cars and structures. Most of them are very close to a step by step set of instructions. These days it's a photo essay and there are times when some of it is left out.

Jack

Please don't change a thing!

I don't want to wait a month for the next issue to find out how to put that frog in my new switch and then another month to find out where the points go!  If it takes 20 pages to describe COMPLETELY  how to build a switch then that's great!  Just as important is the linked in data sources for what items were used in that 20 page project.  Soooo, please don't change a thing!    Russ  

Always the same!

No matter what an editor does he gets comments going in every direction. Too long, too short, whatever.

I sometimes just pass by long articles especially if they aren't helpful or entertaining to me. I also sometimes pass by short articles if of no interest.

I hope they don't change things and especially the photographic content. I'd rather see lots of good quality photos and shorter descriptions than a wordy article and one small photo. Event the lousy MR articles have basically gone to photos (dark, small, not helpful) with just captions as their way of presenting info.

MRH is awesome and is still the best model railroad information out there.

As  stated above.......just don't read them if they are too long!

Just my 2¢

oldline1

I may not read every article first time through

But I generally wind up reading every article before the next issue arrives.  To be honest, not every topic appeals to me to the extent that I will dive right into it on the day the magazine arrives.   But everything gets at least a skim, even the scales and gauges that don't appeal to me or the topics on electronics, operations, or modeling that I'm not going to be interested in applying to my layout.  Eventually, I will probably get around to doing something in that topic, and having a vague memory of "I saw something about that..." is enough to trigger a search.

And like Russ, once I'm getting hip deep into a project, it's not something I'm really going to want to have to follow over a series of months, especially if it's a project that could be completed in 8 hours or less.

Janet N.

Long Articles

In my opinion, Jim Six's article on 36 foot boxcars and Tony Thompson's article on industrial switching operations were two of the best that have appeared in the magazine, even though neither is directly applicable to my own layout. Every issue of MRH contains articles that are of interest to me and most issues contain at least one that isn't, and that's OK. Some subjects can be covered adequately in half a page, others are unnecessarily long and I wind up skimming them, but articles like the two above examples are worth taking the time to read every word and study every photo. Jim Six and Tony Thompson are authorities on the subjects that they write about. I look forward to seeing more of their work. 

Joe S

I get it. I love the

I get it. I love the magazine. I appreciate every aspect of the magazine. I guess I’m being selfish. It’s just not my era. I appreciate the article and the value for so many readers. And I love how responsive Joe is. Please, I was not complaining. If it was 16 pages on early 90’s short line lumber operations in the Pacific Northwest I’d be enthralled! I guess, it’s just the same era in that portion of the magazine every month. Like, can we get a ‘limited modeler’ from a different era, or locale? Maybe that is more what I was saying. Again, I read every article and every line. It’s all of value to me. 

We appreciate any feedback

Thanks joe

I love the long articles. I’d love it even more if it would rotate away from steam/transition era modeling every month. 

Detailed articles

I personally like long detailed articles, I want to know what parts are used and where they come from, I also want insight on how a particular model is built. Sometimes I can learn a thing or two as to how to build a model better than what I currently do.

I remember when Model Railroader used to do such articles, but now they're more concerned with helping Walthers to sell products then they are with helping modelers like most of us here.

if you have 10,000 readers

if you have 10,000 readers and if 90% like/love and artical and 10% dislike a give artical you would presumably be happy.  if you have four articals on average.  Then you have 1000 readers disliking any give article and potentially up to 4000 of your 1000 readers disliking at least 1 article per month.  If you assume a lot if overlap you would take about 6-8 months to have every single reader dislike at least ine artical in your magazine.  And this is with 90% of the readers liking the article,  

Considering people are a LOT more likely to post or comment about something they don't like then something they do like and you are going to find someone upset about everything you do.

-Doug M

I hear ya

I hear ya. To some degree we can only publish what we get, but we can also tell people what we need more of. To that end we need more new stuff … diesels, more scenery how-tos (era doesn’t matter), and more DCC (all trains need to go, scale and era doesn’t matter in more broad DCC how-tos like short protection, how to use JMRI and the like).

I'd also like to see Jim mix it up a bit more with some modeling thoughts to go with the prototype research stuff. Also throwing in a western road might be interesting … well guess what! Next month Jim does western road steamer project.

Artilce length

Having  read War and Peace 20 pages with pictures does  not seem daunting

If you are a serious modeler building kits, good instructions are a must. 

A good article with all the details  makes MRH a cut above MR which shrinks articles to save printing costs

When you don’t have to buy ink…

Might as well stuff as much into the magazine as you can. I probably only read 20% of RE and MRH every month, but it’s worth it. I always find content that is enjoyable and useful. I’d love to see more modern articles too.

Ink

Maybe no ink, paper and potal costs, but there is still the expense of authors, editing time, design work, ad prep, server expense and all that. The biggest advantage of online is the simplified distribution system that gets into places like the UK, Europe and Australia at the same time it reaches the domestic market.

Force?

MEC fan, Are you complaining about people complaining?  LOL