I don’t know what this says about the world, but here goes anyway. After I bought the digital version of Model Railroader, I boxed up about 18 years of MR, thinking I might sell them on eBay or sumpthin. Well, guess what? There ain’t a huge market for used magazines and even books, which says something about what we’ve become (not very literary, I’m thinking). Anyway, because I hate to just pitch the mags into the recycling bin, I called my local model train store and offered them to the owner–just to get the dang things out of my house. He declined, then told me about his experience. “I set two boxes of used model railroad magazines outside my store one night with a sign saying, ‘Free.’ The next day when I came to work there were six boxes in front of the store.” He suggested I take 'em to the local library.
Yes Joe it is the digital age. I wish I were near you I would take them off your hands.
Joe, before you pitch them, I have a friend who is collecting. Let me contact him and see if he will take them for cost of postage.
Bob C.
Joe Rusz said:
“I set two boxes of used model railroad magazines outside my store one night with a sign saying, ‘Free.’ The next day when I came to work there were six boxes in front of the store.”
That is funny! Yes Joe, I think this is truly a sign of the times but not all bad. You said your self that you got the CD. People are still interested in reading and the information, they just don’t want the clutter. I try very hard to keep only digital copies of most things. Years ago I cleaned out all my magazines only keeping the ones that had good locomotive drawings. They may yet be scanned in so I can ditch those too. Remember less boxes full of magazines equals more space for models!
Contact RailPub as well. The owner sells old magazines and out of print railroad books, you just might have an issue or two that he wants.
I’ve ordered some out of print magazines from him and it was well worth the info!
You could contact your local grade schools and middle schools as well and see if they might allow you to donate them to their schools for the children. Or if you have a childrens home or childrens hospital in the area, you might be able to donate them there as well.
Inquire at your doctors office and dentist’s office They have a problem keeping magazines.
their customers take them home
Bill
I usually leave a few at my doctors hoping somebody reads them and gets the “train bug.”
Also, when my club does a show, we’ll hand them out to the public, although I think when they look at the prices they may get sticker shock.
It takes some time and effort, but I always avoid trashing them.
Pat
I’m sorry, Joe, but that is a funny story. It’s also very sad.
Every so often I ride the subway in this town. It’s offers a pretty good snapshot of a cross-section of the populace of our town.
A few years ago it was clear that most people on the subway train were readers. Almost everybody seemed to have a book or a newspaper in hand.
Nowadays, however, almost everybody is tethered to a handheld device. They stare at cellphones and play some kind of game while nodding their heads, their ears plugged with tiny, sometimes noisy, earbuds, they watch movies on their laptops or their notebooks, or they talk to somebody through barely visible miniature microphones. Some people, a very small minority, read e-books.
Very few have hardcopy of any kind nowadays.
I usually have a book on me, but I’m a neanderthal; ask anyone.
Joe’s story points up the demise of our hobby’s popularity among the young. As a kid, I used to spend nearly all my allowance on back issues of MR and RMC. Gosh, if anybody had offered these magazines to me I’d have put a new cardboard box on my bike’s rat trap PDQ, jumped on board and pedalled pell-mell across town to pick them up!
Of course, all the possibilities presented in model magazines can easily cause one to lose one’s focus, as I know very well from my own long experience.
Nowadays all my modelling efforts are aimed towards the single end of building my railroad with a specific theme in mind, and I do not allow myself to be distracted from this. To that end, for the past several years I have intentionally avoided exposing myself to the many temptations I have found in many decades of Model RR magazines!
I have been encouraging Devon to remain focussed and adopt a similar approach.
Cheers, everyone.
Yes leave them at any business where waiting is way of life, they are usually always starved for anything new to put on the waiting room magazine table. Hospitals, urgent care, dentists, eye places, pediatricians, government offices like the IRS, DMV, etc, anyplace where the waiting time can be measured in hours will appreciate the donations. just leave a half dozen here and there before you know it they’ll be all gone, and you might even help to spread the disease a little.
Randy Lehrian Jr. said:
…Years ago I cleaned out all my magazines only keeping the ones that had good locomotive drawings. They may yet be scanned in so I can ditch those too. …
Wait! I just sent you a box of magazines! 
I take a small stack of magazines to the train shows every now and then as giveaways. I put them up front near where the kids congregate, and they’re almost always gone before too long.
Also, see if there’s a “youth in model railroading” group in your area. They may be interested in back issues. I know when I was a kid, someone was giving away a bunch of old magazines, and that’s how I got started on my Narrow Gauge Gazette collection. (There were a bunch of old MR and RMC in there as well, which have found new homes via my “train show giveaway” program.)
Later,
K
Boy Scouts does a model railroading merit badge. Contact the local office and see i they have a counselor for that badge and see if he wants them.
Kevin Strong said:
Randy Lehrian Jr. said:
…Years ago I cleaned out all my magazines only keeping the ones that had good locomotive drawings. They may yet be scanned in so I can ditch those too. …
Wait! I just sent you a box of magazines!
Ut-oh… busted. I think calling those magazines is underselling them in a big way! I’m even crating a cardboard storage unit with yearly dividers and a up-datable index for them.
So yes I still do collect some printed materials and I’m even reading a barrowed paper copy of Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot” but it’s defiantly quality over quantity for me these days. As for the used MR’s RMC’s and others the perfect thing to do is get them in some young kids hands. There has been lots of great suggestions in this thread for that. As Pat said, it may take more time and effort, but it’s worth it.
I wonder what all these plug in people do when the power goes out… Panic I guess? Riot? It depends how long their batteries last…
What about going to the loo? who wants to be connected to the world in there? A bit of private time with a book or mag is quiet time well spent I say.
I guess I’m just “old Timey”
I use plastic magazine holders like these here for holding my magazines in 3-ring binders. (I’ve no affiliation with the store, I just googled and they came up. You can order them from other online sources as well. Alas, the shop I used last time that had the really good deal on them no longer carries them.)
I just finished putting my entire collection of Gazettes, GRs, and Timber Transfers in 3-ring binders. It makes it SO much easier to find any given issue now!
BTW, there are on-line indexes for the Gazette and the Timber Transfer. The GR indexes are available from the GR web site, though only in .pdf form and only by each individual year. I haven’t–yet–found an all-inclusive, searchable index for them.
Later,
K
OK, I confess. After I got my MR DVD, I went through my print collection and saved the issues that had something I might want/need. The main reason for saving 'em: If you want to print out plans from the DVD, they will not be as well defined as they are in print. We discussed this all a while ago when the DVD came out. Kalmbach admitted that to scan each magazine at optimal resolution would have made the whole process cumbersome (you can ask Elmassian all the computer stuff) and so they did it kinda quick and easy.
Joe Rusz said:
OK, I confess. After I got my MR DVD, I went through my print collection and saved the issues that had something I might want/need. The main reason for saving 'em: If you want to print out plans from the DVD, they will not be as well defined as they are in print. We discussed this all a while ago when the DVD came out. Kalmbach admitted that to scan each magazine at optimal resolution would have made the whole process cumbersome (you can ask Elmassian all the computer stuff) and so they did it kinda quick and easy.
To me, this completely defeats the purpose of a digital version. I’d want to be able to zoom in on detail, but if the scan resolution is low, then all you get when zoomed is big pixel blocks. Technically, scanning at higher resolution would have required more than one disk to hold all the content. Another option would have been to mix resolutions (low for text, high for graphics). Either method would have cost them more time and profit.
The PDF files they sell have the same downfall. I bought one once. Never again.
I agree with the man formerly known as Jon. One should be able to zoom in and it’s still sharp. But, I still enjoy having all those back issues. I mainly use the articles for inspiration, so I don’t need to print out plans in high resolution.
Maybe newer versions will be all digital instead of scans?
Thanks for saving me the cost of medium res…
I keep my mags; GR, Trains and Classics in the reading room and the lap top stays on the desk.
John
This is the discussion I have with customers when I set up the copier to scan files. 200dpi is quick and the files are small, but 600 or 800 dpi is better for graphics and if they want to enlarge the image. The really good scanners can even do 1200 dpi, but that’s usually overkill for my customers.