looking for Railroad Model Craftsman archives

As far as I know, RMC has yet to be digitized or scanned in and made available on line in any form.

I have MR in digital from 33-2003 and from 2010-2019.  I am going to have to scan and convert the 04-09 ones myself, and then get rid of all the MR hard print copies.  Also have the Model Railroading mag from 79 to 2005 or so and Rail Model Journal from 90 to 2007. OSTrains from #1 to #55 and a few others. There are a number of other mags, historical society, and model mags in digital you can save to your drive too, but for some reason no one has seen fit to scan and pdf the RMC's yet apparently. I just had scattered issues of it over the years when I saw something of interest to me, and ended up cutting out the articles I was interested in and tossing the rest. The problem with digital is that if you want to scan and pdf them in the best quality, you can easily be around 1meg per page and end up with a HUGE pdf file. Scanning them at about 60% quality gets you a reasonable size, but you can tell it is not as crisp on the screen so in between someplace is a happy compromise.  Either way, they all end up far too big of a file to email to anyone.  But they are handy.

@oscaletrains posted:

......... but for some reason no one has seen fit to scan and pdf the RMC's yet apparently.

You'd have to take that up with the owners of RMC.  

Hello it started out as model Craftsman until 1948 when they added railroad to it I probably have most of a duplicate set of Originals if you're interested I have not heard of any digital format of the magazine lots of valuable information in there if you like old stuff

@oscaletrains posted:

I have MR in digital from 33-2003 and from 2010-2019.  I am going to have to scan and convert the 04-09 ones myself, and then get rid of all the MR hard print copies.  Also have the Model Railroading mag from 79 to 2005 or so and Rail Model Journal from 90 to 2007. OSTrains from #1 to #55 and a few others. There are a number of other mags, historical society, and model mags in digital you can save to your drive too, but for some reason no one has seen fit to scan and pdf the RMC's yet apparently. I just had scattered issues of it over the years when I saw something of interest to me, and ended up cutting out the articles I was interested in and tossing the rest. The problem with digital is that if you want to scan and pdf them in the best quality, you can easily be around 1meg per page and end up with a HUGE pdf file. Scanning them at about 60% quality gets you a reasonable size, but you can tell it is not as crisp on the screen so in between someplace is a happy compromise.  Either way, they all end up far too big of a file to email to anyone.  But they are handy.

I'm sorry, but why? You want to scan 5 or 6 years of MR- that is 60 or 70 issues times 100 pages (wild guess). Thousands of pages and it would take countless hours.

Why not just keep the magazines? I like thumbing through old issues. Besides, if these are the only years MR hasn't scanned, I'm sure they will get around to it.

@Will posted:

I'm sorry, but why? You want to scan 5 or 6 years of MR- that is 60 or 70 issues times 100 pages (wild guess). Thousands of pages and it would take countless hours.

Why not just keep the magazines? I like thumbing through old issues. Besides, if these are the only years MR hasn't scanned, I'm sure they will get around to it.

Well, for me it is a matter of space. I need to move OUT all the bookcases holding all these magazines. I have no planes to nuke the 48 to the foot ones but the rest gotta go somewhere.

Actually, it is pretty easy to scan these, you take out the staples, cut away the folded area in the middle with a paper slicer and run them through the scanners duplex feeder. Then you just turn that into a pdf file.

@Trinity River Bottoms Boomer posted:

Contact White River Production, new owner of RMC and Railfan & Railroad.  Some RMC back issues are available as digital but not going back to the beginning.  They might be considering releasing the entire collections of these magazines in CD format since Kalmbach has for several of their publications.

Actually no, there have been people attempting to get them to do it but they have been told that there is no plan to do so. IF I had a complete set I probably would have done that but I maybe had 100 issues total so it was easier to just cut out what I wanted to keep.

@Carey Williams posted:

Hello it started out as model Craftsman until 1948 when they added railroad to it I probably have most of a duplicate set of Originals if you're interested I have not heard of any digital format of the magazine lots of valuable information in there if you like old stuff

I was stunned by the amount of great info in the Model Railroading magazine, especially in the first 7  or 8 years or so. Late 80's and 90's were mostly info for more modern modelers than me so things were sparse from those years though.

@oscaletrains posted:

Actually no, there have been people attempting to get them to do it but they have been told that there is no plan to do so. IF I had a complete set I probably would have done that but I maybe had 100 issues total so it was easier to just cut out what I wanted to keep.

A former editor of RMC told me that the magazine did not buy many of the articles outright as Kalmbach does. They essentially paid for one time use so they don't own the copyright and therefore can't reprint without permission from the original author or estate.

For example.  I just scanned the 12-04 MR.  It started with 156 pages and after deleting all the full page ad spreads and the crap in the back it is now 88 pages.  About 50megs for the pdf and they look fine.  Can be enlarged about 2x before they begin to look fuzzy around the edges of stuff.

I doubt there is much of a market for older RMC issues in electronic form.  The back issue hard copies are mostly readily available.  Our best bet is some tech savvy passionate hobbyist who wants to do this for their own collection and as a public service. There is a fellow who has digitized most of the old 1930s aviation and model airplane magazines through the 1970s or so. Complete runs of Model Builder for example.  Called fullsizeplans.com.  John Holtmann did this for some of the older Lionel catalogs and various train magazines until for some reason Lionel wouldn't let him continue.  Bad karma if you ask me, but I'm sure they had their reasons, however foolish .  Even if the copyright has expired, it's best as a proprietor not to have the current corporate trademark holder threatening you with legal action.  Costly and not worth it. Not saying Lionel did this, but the potential alone may have deterred John and he's not talking about it as far as I know.

Here's his old website:

http://www.hslinc.com/dahome/dalionelhome.html

@Trinity River Bottoms Boomer posted:

Thanks for the info regarding RMC Jim.  However, the early years should no longer be governed by any copyright issues though.  Right, wrong?  Since I'm not a Legal Eagle lawyer I wouldn't know.  Of course, I imagine White River has little or no interest investing $$$ in any DVD sets of those years.

Guess it's up to members who may have RMC's with selective articals they can print for fellow members.  As long as no $$$ is involved (except postage) I don't believe there are any copyright issues?  Those with the savvy please state your case.

Please, any attorneys, correct me if I'm wrong.   I believe copyright law says the estate holds the copyright for 70 years after death of the author.  For early works (prior to 1978?) it lasts for 28 years unless renewed at least once then it is extended for 60 (or is it 67) years more.

The MC / RMC run ...1933-2012 only requires a mere 16' of shelving ...MR about the same ...nothing like flipping real pages

@Carey Williams posted:

The MC / RMC run ...1933-2012 only requires a mere 16' of shelving ...MR about the same ...nothing like flipping real pages

Yep, that's what has got to GO.