Rail Fans and Model Railroaders have been served by a large number of magazines in the print media for many decades.  What is really interesting news in the past few years is the emergence of new “online only” magazines.  We don’t normally cover or promote these magazines here but after experiencing one of them now for a couple of years, I am bringing it to your attention.

One of the most impressive of these production is Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine. The magazine is downloadable monthly and is a very professional production with features only available in this media such as embedded video and images of models which you can rotate as you view them. They also have a comprehensive website where you can view free videos, podcasts and dialogue with others in forums and blogs.  For example, they have 178 videos on YouTube.

The best news about them is that the magazine is FREE of charge. They rely on their advertisers and sales from their store for revenue to support their business.

They have also just launched a subscription service (not free but inexpensvie) called TrainmastersTV where one can watch videos on a host of different topics. We mention this partly because Barry Silverthorne, who donated the F7 Cab to our museum, is an Executive Producer for this channel. I have subscribed and have already enjoyed several of their videos.   They claim they are TV-quality high-definition videos and I agree.  One of the documentary videos on the channel features Jason Shron, one of our Board members and the owner of Rapido Trains passionately speaking to his love affair with the Rapido and other VIA trains … watch a preview by clicking here.

To find out more and to explore their Model Railroad Hobbyist website, click here!  To check out Trainmasters TV, click here.

Posting by Russ Milland

Click on each image for a closer look!