Nostalgia & History > What was "The Railroad Man's Magazine"?

At the bottom of the New Orleans newsstand seen in this historical Shorpy photo,

http://www.shorpy.com/node/9684?size=_original

the July 1908 issue of the The Railroad Man's Magazine is on display. Does anyone have any information about this publication?

Ray

p.s. this is what should be the standard for on-screen photo resolution these days.

If my memory serves me correct, The Railroad Man's Magazine was a newsprint magazine published after turn of the 20th Century; later become RAILROAD was published by Carstens. Later merged with RAILFAN.

Marty Harrison
Knob Noster, MO

I think Carstens published it after it became Railfan And Railroad. Freeman Hubbard was editor of Railroad magazine for years. The old pulp issues had some neat stuff in them.

One drawback of the "Railroad" as it was in the 1940's and 50's was that the cover illustration didn't relate to any of the articles inside. What brought this memory up was an issue with a Pacific Electric freight motor, probably of the 1619 class, on the cover, that didn't have a thing about PE on the inside. And this was when I lived next door to a PE line and these locomotives were part of daily life. Note that this was the version that was about the same size as Popular Mechanics of that era, not the larger format of "Trains".

DNRY122 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> One drawback of the "Railroad" as it was in the
> 1940's and 50's was that the cover illustration
> didn't relate to any of the articles inside. What
> brought this memory up was an issue with a Pacific
> Electric freight motor, probably of the 1619
> class, on the cover, that didn't have a thing
> about PE on the inside. And this was when I lived
> next door to a PE line and these locomotives were
> part of daily life. Note that this was the
> version that was about the same size as Popular
> Mechanics of that era, not the larger format of
> "Trains".

That would suck if you didn't know that. Wondered how many people got suckered into buying an issue thinking it had an article about cover art...bummer!

livesteamer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If my memory serves me correct, The Railroad Man's
> Magazine was a newsprint magazine published after
> turn of the 20th Century; later become RAILROAD
> was published by Carstens. Later merged with
> RAILFAN.

Thanks, Marty. I knew about "Railroad" ( http://www.trainorders.com/images2/view.php?159197 ), but I did not know about its ancestry.

Ray



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/17/11 08:55 by Ray_Murphy.

"Railroad Man's" magazine had several features.

It dated back likely to the 1900's, and in those years included fiction articles by many famous railroad writers of the era. Some of the stories were highly fictional, and others were thinly disguised accounts of real incidents which took place. At the time the fiction was written, many of the readers would be familiar with the actual incidents described and personalities involved.

I think "Eddie Sand" was a UP operator and later train dispatcher working the LA&SL.The Milwaukee was was portrayed in similar fiction. Lasiter's "Glory Days of the Rio Grande" was autobiographical and accurately depicted the Rio Grande narrow guage operations in Colorado. I think this was originally a series of "Railroad" articles, as was Bill Knapke's "Railroad Caboose". I recall reading a surprisingly accurate account of the Burlington Route strike of 1877 carefully rephrased, but I'm sure anyone involved would have known the real identities of the people portrayed at the time it was written, just as they would when a similar person to Eugene V.Debs was portrayed.

Just as Gilbert & Sullivan's musicals contain political and social satire aimed at 19th Century British audiences, some of the "Railroad" fiction paraphrased very real and contentious issues in railroading of a century ago.

The magazine had several skilled artists who contributed both cover art and line drawings for the articles. Photo reproduction in early magazines was difficult and of poor quality, but line drawings and lithographs worked well. Joe Easley contributed drawings for decades. He must have been a very old man by the 1960's, as his drawing style loosened up to become almost cartoons.

Another popular feature was the rosters compiled by "Sy -------" (forget his last name), usually accurate and some from obscure railroads.

The editor, Freeman Hubbard was an accomplished writer himself.

Someone I met once visited the "editorial office" and found it to be two small rooms in a commercial building crammed with photographs and manuscripts.



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 01/17/11 15:32 by eminence_grise.

Sy's last name was Reich, I believe.

For the last decades of its life, Railroad was published by Popular Publications, Inc. In my opinion, Carstens' purchase of the publishing rights was a mercy-killing (Freeman Hubbard sounded and acted senile in those last years), the questions in the "Information Booth" (edited by a nonexistent entity named Barbara Kreimer) were contrived to bring out some recently-unearthed factoids. The news articles were mainly letters from readers, unresearched and shallow.

I really wonder how many readers they gained by changing the name of Carstens' publication to Railfan & Railroad. It was still the same old Railfan. They promised to incorporate some of the features, but I never saw it. The fiction would have been nice to see again (in the stories' original form, not the heavily-edited stuff seen in the last few years), but anything else probably wasn't necessary. The diesel rosters were archaic compared to those available in Extra 2200 South. On the positive side, Railroad did carry an official listing of railroad lines that were being abandoned, that was often helpful.

And don't even get me started on the girly shots with incidental railroad backgrounds, or some of the ads that the magazine thought would appear to railfans or railroad men!

Carl Shaver
Lombard, IL

Hey Carl-- YOU are absolutely incorrect with all your denouncing of RAILROAD MAGAZINE. Maybe you should get your facts straight. ALL of the columnists that contributed to RAILROAD were real people, not "non-existent entities" like you refer to Barbara Kreimer who wrote the Information Booth for so many years. Steve Maguire, Sy Reich, Mike Eagleson, Freeman Hubbard, et al, were all everyday people. And their information was factual too. Too bad you didn't like it ! Oh well...

Regarding your non-existent entity you quote, such as Barbara Kreimer once again,
check this out:

http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2003/11/13/loc_otherobit13.html

See what I mean ?
Cheers.

KRK

---

Well, Ken, I certainly retract what I said about Barbara--apparently she did exist, after all! And of course the information was factual...only late, or based on something that probably appeared in the local papers or something. Back in those days I read everything railroad, from trade publications to fan magazines to union papers, so I knew what was news, and when.

The fiction was great back in the days up until perhaps the mid-1960s. After that, though, stories that were repeated had cuts, sometimes explanations, and other things that I thought, as a journalist, were detractions from the originals. I would dearly love to see Railfan & Railroad bring back some good old fiction stories by Harry Bedwell and others, if it could be done.

It wasn't that I didn't like or appreciate the magazine, Ken--I had a subscription right up until the end. But it left me shaking my head more often than not, and I'd find myself going to the back issues when I wanted to read some really good stories. And Sy Reich's rosters were all we had back in those days--lots of people didn't know about X2200.

I'm really sorry for having come down so harshly on the magazine, which was probably a throwback to an earlier time of railfanning, as it was obviously a glorification of a different day of railroading. It was sad to watch it decline and fall, but that was probably inevitable.

Carl Shaver
Lombard, IL