The page count is related to the advertising count-- the June issue of Trains that arrived today has 2 pages of non-Kalmbach ads, plus the rear cover. The advertising vanished, and the page count declined. R&R seems to have a much healthier advertising base.

The ownership listing shows a number of names from Kalmbach's past- last names that were contributors to Model Railroader, or past KPC executives and editors. Earlier versions of this showed such names as Morgan and Wescott.

Many years ago, it was mentioned by a Trains staffer that MR financially subsidized Trains for many years; Al. K. wanted to publish Trains, even though for the first 15-20 years, it was financially about a break-even at best.

Sad to see the empire of 1027 crumble like this; I agree that after Jim Wrinn was gone, it's been a pretty poor publication.

Howard P.

A challenge of a small company like this is the ownership. As each generation takes control, there are more and more owners, many with little to no interest and participation in the company. However, every owner wants their annual payments and the few actually involved tend to work hard for little more than the others.

Many small firms like this last about 3 to 4 generations before either a few family members buy everyone else out or the entire firm is sold off to someone else.

To me, the action isn't a surprise. What is a surprise is how quiet the sale went with so many people potentially involved.

Bart

Just so you're not giving a distorted picture here.........

I had occasion to dredge through the Kalmbach file library at one time ages ago doing research for a project, and I saw firsthand several of these filed-away stories. But, more specifically, they had notations on them regarding PAYMENT for the stories. In other words, David P. Morgan (at least) paid for any stories filed away. I got the impression from notes and late librarian George H. Drury that some of these stories were assignments, or stories requested by the editors of certain writers on speculation. I would easily take that against "The Black Hole of Newton," where you quickly learned never to entrust irreplaceable original slides to Jim Boyd........

As for the "golden children" moniker, I can tell you that editors and publishers EVERYWHERE will highly favor, and return repeatedly to, writers and photographers that can produce in a timely fashion or who can write entertaingly or at least coherently, AND abide by the "rules." The bane of editors' existence is potential contributors who apparently have never even read the magazine, who have no idea what kind of material they want, sending them what looks like a college paper along with an unedited, uncaptioned pack of photo prints.

The recent two decades of internet access, digital photo files (it no longer costs you 25-60 cents every time you snap the shutter on slide film, more for print priocessing), and "auto-everything" cameras with far more latitude than slide film has vastly opened up the photography submission market, and it shows vastly for Railpace Newsmagazine and R&R. Print railfanning is no longer the domain of the guy who can afford a black-and-white darkroom. But that same internet access has sadly eliminated a lot of the desire or "need" for magazines of all sorts in the first place.......

I spotted the sale notice in the current issue of Trains[i], and it didn't surprise me. I do cars as well as steam engines, and I saw my subscriptions to [i]Car and Driver, Road and Track, Automobile and Autoweek go poof over the last few years. This steeled me for the incipient loss of Trains, which has been a fixture of my life since 1970.

In the 1970s, I sold David P. Morgan some opinionated garbage that embarrasses me now, some of which he printed. I knew that he was encouraging a budding writer as well as buying rights to pieces that might be placed in competing publications. At the time, in the words of a college classmate, appearing in Trains stroked my ego to a throbbing erection.

Maybe there's hope, but when I got my renewal notice that said the publisher reserves the right to reduce the number of issues per year, I didn't risk any more than a year's subscription.

I don't agree with Howie that [i]Trains[i] is a "pretty poor publication," but the falloff in page count is scary. Bill Stephens isn't John Kneiling, but he's good. He just needs a couple more co-workers. Solomon sounds too much like me to have confidence in.

Aarne Frobom
Holden Hall, Michigan State University, class of 1974

Don't be cynical. Revisionist history suggests that those articles never saw print simply simply due to an overworked editorial staff.

Somewhat off topic, but I found the following interview with the new owner with these model railroader youtubers to be quite enlightening, including their past experience in breathing new life into faded magazines, investing for the long term (did he really say they have a $bilion$ dollar family behind the business?) and investment in digital investments.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mOrCTG11d4

Bob

A July 30, 2026 article in the Chattanooga Times Free Press:
Link: WEHCO sells Chattanooga Times Free Press to Craig and Max Fuller

I hope the newspaper fares better than Classic Trains, Great Model Railroads, and Model Railroad Planning magazines, as well as the Canadians who were subscribers to the magazines Firecrown purchased.

In other news we neglected to share here:

In the July 2026 issue to subscribers was a letter entitled "Dear Subscriber." It announced that they are dropping two print editions annually, starting with this September's issue and continuing with next February's print issue. They say that there will still be twelve issues annually, but the February and September issues will only be available digitally for subscribers by downloading their new Trains app. They say financial issues are driving the change, and as costs for printed editions rise they are cutting costs by eliminating two printed issues.

I've already downloaded the September digital issue on my laptop, which I only use about once a week. I'll get back to you.

Meanwhile, in order to read a "definitive" article in the latest issue, I now have the latest issue of the UK's Steam Railway downloaded to their app on my smartphone. $5 for that download beats bugging one of my UK friends to get me the issue and spend something like £10 to send it to me.....

I'm literally running a business helping historical societies move into the digital world and even I think this "you paid for 12 but you're only getting 10" thing is absolutely insane.

Can you imagine going to the grocery store, getting a dozen eggs, then opening up the carton to find out two of them were just bags of powdered egg?

If they mis-priced their subscription price, I hate to say it, but that's on them.

I can't imagine this, combined with their termination of the special editions and offerings that were actually good (cough, Classic Trains, cough), is going to do them any favors.

I know I sure as hell have given up plans to submit content for their various publications. I guess this is all great news for White River.

I had high hopes at first but Firecrown's ownership is proving to be a real disappointment.

Last summer, Firecrown ceased mailing paper copies to subscribers outside of the US. They cited "global delivery challenges", but Canadians on another forum say that paper publications from White River and publishers in the UK are still arriving in their mailboxes.