So I'm going to 'admit my dirty little secret' ...

A -long- time ago ... at least a decade and
perhaps more than 2 decades ... I dropped
ALL of my magazine subscriptions.

Why? They kept piling up without being read.
Then I'd go on a binge for a single evening and
catch up on -several months- of MR and RMC.
Obviously I wasn't 'reading every word and
looking at most of the ads any more. So I bagged
the subscriptions. Right at a time in my modeling
life when I was ramping up on more and more
time spent on the hobby!

Some of the broad spectrum of reasons are:

1) I'd been in the hobby long enough that
my modeling skills and interests had
'matured'. (Please don't show this to
my wife ... she might die laughing at my
use of that term.) As in - the repeating
articles on the same old topics didn't
interest me any more.

2) The ratio of the content to ads of the mags
had changed - significantly - in the wrong
direction. Not only were they devoting
more and more pages to all ads ... but the
articles and columns were getting shorter
and shorter.

3) The articles and columns seemed to be less
and less relevant (I'd moved more towards
"prototype modeling" and away from "just
model trains").

4) I asked myself how valuable were the mags
(to me) if I could catch up on as much as 6
months or more of two magazines ... in a
single evening. For about 10 seconds I
debated "which one to keep?" and then as
soon as I said to myself "why not drop both"
the decision was made.

5) Many of my friends had subscriptions and
when I went to their house I could catch
up ... in the free time between the parts of
the conversation I was interested in ... so I
didn't 'need' my own subscription.

6) At one point I didn't read any of the mags
(any where) for about 18 months ... and
didn't seem to miss it. When I discovered
that it had been that long I didn't "panic".

7) I had discovered and started to use Yahoo
groups. STMFC among many.

8) Quite some time after I dropped my subscriptions
the online mag "MRH" came out. (Isn't in just
a bit interesting that none of the hobby mags
have decided to try out the MRH model in a
serious way? Old habits -are- hard to break.)
But even that I don't "read every month" ...

So do I wish for the mags to continue. Yes ... but
only sort of ... as in - if they went back to more content
and more of the content was more relevant to my
interests (prototype info, ops, and DCC/electronics).

I'll creep back into the dark corner of the train room
for now ... thanks for listening ... hope my 'secret'
didn't shock you ... too much ...
- Jim Betz