I drove out to Oxford today to collect another recent ebay purchase, this is a set of bound Model Railroader magazines covering the years 1981 up to 1997, a lot of reading and a lot of weight!
I stopped reading MR sometime around 1991, so I remember some of these issues from the first time around, but these issues also predate my interest in HO, so reading some of the issues from the very early eighties is quite an eye opener, the strides the hobby made even between 1981-91 are pretty impressive, and if you factor in the difference between an Athearn engine of 1981 like the overscale wide body GP35 ($13.95) and the latest releases of recent years, there is really no comparison.
I've started at the christmas 1981 issue and I reckon it will take me quite a few sessions to reach the end of the issues, there are approximately 190 issues of MR in this collection, and it only cost me £20 plus petrol to drive over there and pick them up, so I estimate that as less than 20p per issue.
One of the most obvious differences between the MR of 1981 and the MR of today is that these older issues are much thicker, running closer to 200pages, with some really in-depth articles on scratch-building and kit-bashing, the hobby at that time was a lot more about modeling than it is now, with pretty much nothing being used as an actual rtr, everything seems to need work in some way, whether it's an article on how to put an Atlas motor and frame into a LifeLike F40PH or how to rework Matchbox diecast toys to create semi-trucks, the hobby was a LOT more work in those days!
I'm going to push on and read through the rest of these issues before taking them into the clubroom to add to the reference library, I suspect that I will find a whole load of interesting projects lurking in these pages, especially the prototype building plans for stations and other buildings which would look great on my upcoming HO module board.
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