Model Railroad Hobbyist: A Threat to MR?

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Interesting thread, guys.

There's no question the web used properly to distribute railroad and model railroad-related content that's been professionally edited is a powerful new medium. The Railway Herald numbers certainly prove that.

The MRH site is not yet two months old and has had over 150,000 hits. We've had thousands of downloads of our sample mini-issue, and the 5 sponsors who have mini-ad buttons on our site are getting phenomenal click-through rates. And that's just on the news that we're coming - the first issue isn't due out until January 2009. Who knows how well the traffic's going to be once we have a real publication you can read.

So it looks like a marriage made in heaven - free professionally edited content modelers can download supported by hobby vendor advertising.
 
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Joe Were at the dawn of a new era, the Railway Herald has taken off at a stunning rate of knots with almost constant server upgrades required almost monthly, i think they are well set up now though
 
My first forum is/was MMR. I just found this site a few days ago. I see many of the same handles and I figure a few have seen mine before. Just seems that when you have a publication based, or company based forum it never fails to keep up with open, free flow of information. But, hey, I support them all, have a sub to MMR & Classic Trains, bought Joe's DVD set, starting to post here more and more and even have a sub to RMC. So, hey, it's all good, I go with the flow :D
 
Can't wait for the full issue to be done. I really enjoyed the sample issue and look forward to more great articles.
 
Just something to ponder ...

Roughly 70% of Americans are online (that is browse the web or read emails at home or at work at least once a week).

Over 85% of those under 55 are online.
About 30% of those 55 or older are online.

Based on statistics I've seen, I would estimate well over half of today's hobbyists are 55 or older, so ...

My best guess is about half of all model railroaders are online. However, today's over 55 group will continue to dwindle over the next 20 years as they age, and quite a number of those under 55 will move into the 55 and over group in the next 20 years ...

Meaning the number of model railroaders online is going to grow dramatically over the next 20 years, even if those not yet online never do get online.

A totally electronic magazine like Model Railroad Hobbyist will only reach the half that's online today. This means for at least the next 20 years, there will still be a significant market for paper model railroading magazines.

However, I also estimate roughly 40% of all model railroaders no longer subscribe to Model Railroader ... so there's also a significant number of modelers worldwide that would be very interested in a free model railroading magazine over the internet.

Our traffic stats are bearing this out. We now have had over 200,000 total page hits on our site since July, with a high percentage of those (almost 40%) being outside the US - and our first issue isn't even due out yet for another 3.5 months! It appears there's a huge interest in model railroading around the world that's not really being tapped even by the big boys like Model Railroader.
 
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One thing that hasn't been mentioned is the high cost of postage for a paper magazine these days. For me in the UK, MR costs around $7usd an issue in the shops. (if I can find it that is) A years subscription is 1 1/2 times the price of the US sub. To be honest, I'm finding that "she ain't what she used to be". My monthly hobby budget is quite good but I'm really thinking that its not good value for money anymore.

I have noticed a lot more American & Canadian modelling happening over here in the past few years. I guess for some its a new twist on the hobby. You can only model so many GWR branch lines, and technicolor diesel depots. This could partly explain why MRH is getting 40% of its hit rate from outside the US.
 
Just for the heck of it I posted a link to Joe's new site on the MR forum and it was deleted within a half-hour and a nasty email was sent to me telling me never, ever to do that again.

I doubt I'll ever post on the MR site again. If there's one thing I hate, it's censorship. My guess is MR feels very threatened by any sort of competition.

And I'll never have a scrip to MR. Never had one, never will. There are plenty of other sources for model railroading information out there.

-G-
 
Just out of curiousity, I wonder what MR would do if you posted a link to the RMC web site?
 
It's happened before, Joe, and the posting got yanked. I saw a posting once with a reference to Railroad Model Journal when it was still in business and it got yanked too. I wonder if a link to British Railways Modelling would survive? They've always been paranoid about any posting of links to anything they remotely thought of as competition but MRH seems to have really gotten their hackles up.
 
Yep, nothing like competition I guess

Well, for what it's worth, I don't intend to censor posts over on the MRH site. Of course there's the issue of flame wars and such, but as long as people play nice, links to other magazines don't bother me.
 
When I was Sr. Moderator of a large online forum, I would generally not allow direct links within the posts. I would ask our members to be polite while in our our domain. But general discussion was never a problem. If fact, more than a few times it lead to some positive changes. If MRR policy is to remove posts that they feel are a direct threat (or for other reasons - sometimes we don't know all the details) then no big deal. Its not like a all us train nuts get lost in the sea of 200 mags to pic from....

I guess I would tend to think that their might be some really cool ways to collaborate.
 
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