Eastern Railroad Discussion > Renew Trains, Railpace, etc?

I've got a bind. I subscribe to these magazines which carry 3-6 months old information. They want me to pay them $40 for another year. After I pay $30 to Todd to help TrainOrders, what exactly do I get from the other guys?

Railpace? OK, it's local to me, reasonably current info, I know the guys, etc. Yeah.

Trains? Whoa. Lots of stuff I don't read. News may be 90 days old when I read it. Ads up the kazoo, info squeezed.

Railfan? Gettin' better, but Hal's still using recycled toilet paper, and the colors could be a lot better. But, the editorial stuff has come up big time.

CTC Board? Best pix in the business, articles are good, maps are great. "News" is older than blazes, sometimes 6 months old. prob renew for the pix.

Flimsies? Are they still in business? At least pentrex had the grace to eventually send me a refund.

X2200 South? Ditto to the above.

Short Line? Big fat NO.

Lackawanna484 wrote:


> Trains? Whoa. Lots of stuff I don\\'t read. News may be 90
> days old when I read it. Ads up the kazoo, info squeezed.
>
> Railfan? Gettin\\' better, but Hal\\'s still using recycled
> toilet paper, and the colors could be a lot better. But, the
> editorial stuff has come up big time.



Trains and Railfan use the same grade of paper. That said, Trains printing is better, though its content sorely lacks. I enjoy the photography most of the time---some cutting edge is good, though a whole magazine of it is too much. Where Trains falls down is the written word, in my view. MWH isn't a wordsmith by any stretch of the imagination.




> CTC Board? Best pix in the business, articles are good, maps
> are great. \\"News\\" is older than blazes, sometimes 6 months
> old. prob renew for the pix.


You need to read the news a lot more closely if you think it's six months old by the time it's in the Board. In the April issue, which was in my hands in early March, the CSX column refers to a maintenance blitz that would shut down the CSX lines along the Gulf Coast March 17-23. Yes, news that was actually *ahead* of the event. Helped me plan some vacation, since I was marked off for that week. The news editors' deadline is middle of the month, and the magazine is printed about three weeks later. Three months it might be if the item arrives in the news guy's email box the day after one column was due, and then it has to wait, but six months? No way.



>
> Flimsies? Are they still in business? At least pentrex had
> the grace to eventually send me a refund.
>
> X2200 South? Ditto to the above.
>
> Short Line? Big fat NO.



Gave up on the Short Line when Mac retired. Haven't ever gotten Flimsies or Railpace. X2200...editor Cummings has been making more excuses than magazines lately.

BobE

Don't know whether you guys heard or not, but all the magazines mentioned are headlined next month with the decision the railroads are facing as to whether or not to convert to diesel.

Tony :)
who stopped ALL subscriptions when they expired for those reasons exactly.

Railpace, CTC in that order.



TCSmith

Just curious - anyone here subscribe to The
Railroad Explorer, or is that not considered
a "magazine" in the sense that the others are
(no news content, three times a year, etc.)?
For that matter, anyone subscribe to TRP?

I turned against Railpace when the issues on the West Slope were about 80% tresspassing when it came to the photos. Also added were directions to these locations. That clearly took one onto RR property.

To me that was total irresponsibility on Tom Nemeths part as Editor.

Roadrat

I think some of you have become 'news' lightweights. Probably don't bother with newspapers or currant affairs magazines either. This is partly to blame for the fact that we haven't a clue on world issues.

We have become a society of people who think a 10 minute news bulletin tells them what they need to know before the sport comes on. Reading a paragraph about something happening next week isn't as important as waiting a month and getting a few pages on WHY it is happening.

We are interested in RR's, we need to take a bit more note that some Asian countries have slowing economies, because this tells us they are manufacturing less, which means less exports for them, this inturn tells us people that we are consuming less which means less freight which will cross from west to east by rail. We need to get a grip, we are all in business for ourselves or work for someone else who is in business or have stocks, so we should all take notice of business, we need to take more notice of the big picture rather than the 7 second door stop.

This is why we need in depth reporting on why things happen, and it takes a while to collate the information. Trains isn't a news magazine, it's the RR version of Fortune.

Thanks for reading.

Matt

roadrat wrote:

> I turned against Railpace when the issues on the West Slope
> were about 80% tresspassing when it came to the photos. Also
> added were directions to these locations. That clearly took one
> onto RR property.
>
> To me that was total irresponsibility on Tom Nemeths part as
> Editor.
>
> Roadrat
>
> [%sig%]
You gotta get a grip. He did the same thing with the MGA, Selkirk, Bear Mtn, Sand Patch and almost any other place he's done an article on. Railspace is usualy the kiss of death to any place they write about.
John D.

"I think some of you have become 'news' lightweights. Probably don't bother with newspapers or currant affairs magazines either. This is partly to blame for the fact that we haven't a clue on world issues.

We have become a society of people who think a 10 minute news bulletin tells them what they need to know before the sport comes on. Reading a paragraph about something happening next week isn't as important as waiting a month and getting a few pages on WHY it is happening."


You're generalizing here, big time. I shorted Union Pacific during the Houston meltdown, as management was saying "things are fine." Read that in the WSJ, too. Engineers in Lafayette and East Texas were telling a different story. I put my money on them, not on the WSJ and Fortune, with their views from the business car.

BobE, Excepted Trak and I had a spirited discussion on energy prices here last year, which caused me to add Anadarko, Apache, and Burlington Resources. Made a few dollars. KCS / Stilwell?Every analyst on Wall Street was negative on the railroad and positive on Stilwell. Guess which one tripled?

It's not just about making money, but tying the good information and solid insights gained from the people who haul the cargo out of Long Beach, and out of Baltimore, and Pasadena TX to a bigger picture.

Helped me secure my future...

As an editor for Railpace, I would like to comment to the senders of the other threads. I stopped writing monthly to provide a more accurate column for the "purists" who have ruined the fun in what I was doing. It was bad enough that no news was coming out of South Jersey(nobody even knew the railroads were still here) but when the railfans got involved, well it just wasn't worth my while.

I wrote three feature articles for Railpace on South Jersey Railroads, none of which endorsed trespassing and actually discouraged it. Any photos I have ever taken have been on public property or private property with permission. I still get complements on these articles--nobody ever wrote about these lines and they actually need the exposure if they are going to survive.

As far as Railpace is concerned, I like to get all the pictures once a month in a neat and tidy medium that I can check out at my leisure. I don't have to get online and track this or that down. And from an insider of the railroad industry, I have been told it is one of the only ways to find out what is happening out there since all the railroads are tight lipped.

On behalf of my fellow editors, give Railpace a break. We all have full-time jobs and we're just railfans looking to share the fun of the hobby with other people, whatever their interest level.
Check out more at http://home.att.net/~dividing_creek

Trains magazine will NEVER see another dime from me after that one sided, poorly written and researched "All Alco Issue"... That Issue insulted my intelligence...

Yes railfanning should be fun, but don't these magazines have a responsibility to publish non-biased factual information???

All things considered, I find my subscriptions to Trains and Railpace to provide reasonable value for the money.

Does anyone out there, who is not a member of AAPRCO, subscribe to "Private Varnish" or buy it at a hobby shop?