BRM magazine

[silly moo]

It's more about airfields WW2 and more modern and related buildings and painting 'planes. They didn't show any examples on a layout which I thought was an oversight. I also thought something about transporting the actual 'planes by rail would have been good too.

[PLD]

the giveaway DVD they produce each month and advertise as "Worth £7.99" is really a half hearted affair

They sell you a Mag for £4 and include a 'Free' DVD "Worth 7.99"... My interpretation of that is that the magazine itself must be worth -£3.99... i.e. this rag is so poor we have to pay you to take it off our hands... 

I've never found any of the railway mags consistent enough to subscribe to, prefer to wander into WHS once a month and evaluate them all for content. The result is I think I've bought four in total in the past year as most of the time there's not enough interesting content 

Ditto...

My 2014 buying record was 3x Railway Modeller + 1x BRM. in 2015 so far I've 1x RM and one Model Bus mag (there was some specific local content so please forgive me...) 

[Ensign Elliott]

Likewise. I used to subscribe to Model Rail, but found there was increasingly not enough N gauge in it and too much narrow gauge stuff.

I too prefer to wander into WHS once a month and evaluate them all for content.

[Toneeze]

  Because of the price of the magazines I also look first. Model Rail is printed on poor quality paper and there is a lot of advertisements.I subscribe at the moment to Railway Modeller, the post man keeps rolling the mag even though it states quite clearly "DO NOT BEND ".One interesting feature for me in BRM was "CROSSFEILDS" a BR blue pre-tops layout.The guy has got too much money.

[NeMo]

It's a nice layout for sure. But I agree, it's one where the money thrown at the locos all but overshadows the craftsmanship of the layout owner. Virtually all the photos highlight the Mercig weathering and detailing done to the locos, which at over £100 a pop surely adds up to thousands of pounds for the locomotives alone.

On the other hand, standard issue Metcalfe cardboard kits have been used imaginatively to produce the factory and warehouses that fill the background. Similarly the track work is nicely done. But both these aspects seem to be underplayed, photographers tending to zoom in on the amazing locos. So whenever I've seen this layout published or discussed online, it feels more like an extended Mercig advertisement that anything else. Is the the BRM article any more insightful than that? Or do the locos hog the limelight yet again?

I'd be much more impressed by this layout if the weathering was done by the same guy (or team) building the layout. As it is, in all honesty it feels like a 'quite good' layout that just happens to host an expensive collection of 'truly outstanding' model trains, if that makes any sense.

Cheers, NeMo

One interesting feature for me in BRM was "CROSSFEILDS" a BR blue pre-tops layout.The guy has got too much money.

[Graham Walters]

I'm finding with all of these magazines that the editorial content is overshadowed by the advertising content, and it's the same adverts in all the magazines, it makes me wonder what Hattons budget for advertising is as one example, it must be well over £4k per month.

So they should be raking the money in.

I also think they concentrate too much on the loco's, and not enough on the actual scenery, as I am a novice scratchbuilder, that is what I like to see, not piles of metcalfe kits and the like, it's OK to have a few but some of the layout owners have made no attempt to build anything themselves, and the layouts they now feature show more about the owners wallet size that his skill and craftmanship.

Also the DVD's are really disappointing, I pointed out to them that they should produce proper "How To's" in the style of Joey Ricard, the reply I got was that it takes planning etc etc etc, I was going to post a really sarcastic reply, but somehow knew it would fall on deaf ears.

[Trent]

I get given free copies of BRM on the insistence of an older relative, which as an example of kindness, I cannot be ungrateful for. I have yet to broach the fact that as I model the American stuff there isn't much in the magazine for me; this I think is best passed over in silence. The magazine is certainly useful as a conversation starter/memory trigger for said older relative.

My thoughts on BRM and most other mags I've looked at are that I would happily have 50% less pictures and 50% more writing. This is partly because you can basically get photographs of other people's layouts and how-tos directly from forums these days making magazine format slightly redundant. Whereas in-depth accounts of how trains work, what it was like to work on them in different eras, and so on, are something you can't just get online (the info may be about there but we usually need a middle-man to present it to us in clear engaging text). 

That said: how difficult it must be to try to put together a magazine 'about model trains'. Almost all of your readers would have one gauge and one era and one location in mind, so a general interest model train magazine is always going to go over the heads of a chunk of people.

[Derwentbob]

That said: how difficult it must be to try to put together a magazine 'about model trains'. Almost all of your readers would have one gauge and one era and one location in mind, so a general interest model train magazine is always going to go over the heads of a chunk of people.

True, when I dabbled in OO I was a regular reader of Model Railway Constructor and Railway Modeller as most of every issue was of some relevance to me. These days there are far more articles about specific manufacturers products (modifying or detailing a specific loco etc.) and very scale specific stuff which is less applicable now that I am a member of the Church of the One True Scale. I have yet to find anything in BRM that has made me want to take it any further than the quiet corner of Tesco's magazine aisle, I generally end up with Model Rail (which remains n-gauge friendly despite Chris Leigh's previous digs) in my basket and the occasional Railway Modeller if there is something n-gauge related.

Mind you, if you think its bad for railway modelling magazines just spare a thought for the wargamers. At least railway modellers have scenery and track in common, the main divide being steam/diesel/electric and a small handful of gauges, with only three very popular ones (O, OO, N). Wargamers are divided into bands of approximately 100 years of interest from around 800BC to the present day over nine popular scales and they can't even mix and match like you can with a preservation society or rule one layout. Ancient Greek hoplites in WW2 will never be as acceptable as a steam special on a modern layout.

[Trent]

That's a very interesting point, and I wonder if that helps to explain why one wargame brand in particular (with rather a large market share) specialises in anachronisms ...

[Malc]

Ancient Greek hoplites in WW2 will never be as acceptable as a steam special on a modern layout.

They could always pretend they were re-enacting the final scenes in Blazing Saddles.

[Agrippa]