The reason the magazine is free is because it’s a large enough
package we can include a good number of ads and there’s still
plenty of content. Having articles that don’t interest you in a
monthly publication that also includes ads is the price of free.
Then there’s the question of publishing a weekly model rail-
roading magazine.
While we could potentially split an issue up into 2-3 articles per
week with ads, there’s still a certain amount of fixed overhead
to rolling out an issue regardeless of its size. This fixed issue
rollout overhead takes a couple of days to complete, and so
that would be multiplied by 4 (or 5 on some months).
If you do the math, that’s 8-10 working days per month now
just devoted to rolling out issues taken away from our 20-some
days of production time. In short, that cuts our issue produc-
tion time almost in half, which is not good.
Then there’s how to split up ads across weekly issues. All-in-all,
monthly is a great balance between frequency and production
effort for us, and the hobby vendors are used to a monthly ad
routine with all the general model railroading magazines. If
we’re the one odd-man-out publication with a non-standard
release cycle, hobby vendors could very well find we’d be more
of a pain for them as a weekly.
To sum it all up, monthly works very well for our production pro-
cess, and all the hobby vendors follow a monthly process in ad
placement, so monthly it is!
The MRH website is your answer
If you need a model railroading information fix more frequently
than monthly, then the MRH website is your answer.
When we get those questions about publishing more fre-
quently, not only do we explain that we’ve considered it but
it’s not practical, we also point out to these folks they need to
go frequent the MRH website. There is something new to read
almost every day.
We’re not kidding when we say you should go check out the
MRH website. Some of the content on our website is every bit
as good as the articles in the magazine.
So if you’re needing a model railroading article fix because a
monthly MRH isn’t frequent enough for you, go to
and start reading through the forums and blogs.
To get you started, here’s some of the blog (personal journal)
threads on the MRH website:
Freight Car Standards - Jim Six:
MRH staff notes - 2
MRH-Jul 2013
