Tuesday 1 January 2013

Happy New Year 2013

Happy New Year!

I am keeping my resolutions to myself this year as past failures have been rather embarrassing. But I am starting off the New Year with the desire to keep up-to-date with my model railway reading which lapsed last year (along with model railway construction and blog writing) due to other time pressures.

And speaking about time, the people at Kalmbach Publishing in the US must be in a time warp of some sort because yesterday (31st December 2012) I received my latest copy of Model Railroader - the February 2013 issue. Since it is now the 1st of January, the magazine is a month ahead of the cover date. No matter - it's a good read over the January holidays while I wait for the January/February issue of the Australian Model Railway Magazine due out later this month with a cover date and issue date more in keeping with reality.

The February 2013 Model Railroader does have some good reading.


In particular, I am following the progress of the quarry branch series. Part 2 is in the latest issue. I am also following progress on the quarry branch articles with the video blogs that I can see as a subscriber to Model Railroader. I like this feature as the video nicely supports the article content.  

Model Railroader, like other model railway magazines around the world (e.g. British Railway Modelling and Railroad Model Craftsman) is also available in digital format. I haven't committed to the digital formats as yet as I find the hard copy paper editions easier to read. However, storage of paper magazines is a problem. I am sticking with the paper magazine for Model Railroader and Railroad Model Craftsman for now, but I do buy the occasional British model railway magazine as a digital copy. And I do love Model Railroad Hobbyist which is digital.

Kalmbach Publishing and Model Railroader will be moving further into digital content in a couple of months time with the launch of its MRVideoPlus website which will become an additional source of regular information with video, 3D track plans, and how-to articles. My only concern is whether the new MRVideoPlus will become the prime source of content at the expense of the magazine. We will have to wait and see.

For now, it's sitting back with the hard copy of the February 2013 issue of Model Railroader and enjoying the read.