Westlake Publishing Forums

Very cool!

Nice work. The printed parts look sharp!

Looks almost as good as your modeling. -- Russ

I'm more optimistic...

Here in NZ, the NZ Model Railway Guild has published the NZ Model Railway Journal since the late 1940s.  The forthcoming issue will be the last in print.  The costs of production and distribution, and difficulty getting content have made print unviable.

The Guild has referred to itself as a 'club without walls' as it is a national organisation.  However most have considered their membership fee to be a magazine subscription only, and there has been little 'club' activity in the decades I've been a member.

In the last 12 months the Guild has taken itself online.  The website is intended to be a 'virtual clubroom' rather than a magazine replacement.  There is still edited content, although the style is more akin to a blog than a print magazine. The goal here is social, not profit.

We have:

• Weekly articles. Ironically, to date, material has not been that hard to come by.  This is substantially more content than the magazine provided.
• Weekly snippets. Usually a pictorial, but other features occur
• A facebook-like feed
• Fora
• An Archive - ALL issues of the NZMRJ back to the 40s are available online to members.  The online posts will be archived here too.

There are those who hanker for print, but the new format is immediate and interactive.

As I 'edit' the online posts, I imagine I'm biased as to it's value, but it is certainly a different model to the magazine and offers the potential to be more responsive to members needs. In the editorial chair I get to talk to many modellers around the country and see what they are doing.  There's plenty of innovative modelling going on. It does need to be chased down though. Not much arm-twisting is needed, but I do need to ask.

There's a slowly growing base of active users. We wish things were building faster, but overall we think the path is worthwhile.

Content is specific to the NZ prototype, so will not be of direct interest to most here. The modelling is generic of course, so there should be something for all modellers. The site is at https://thejournal.nz. Some of the site is open to all, but membership is required for the more interesting stuff.  Free membership is offered, which currently allows access to the weekly content. Paid membership (NZ$50 approx US$30 per annum) is required to access the archive and some other features.

Thanks for the feedback, everyone!

The pictures were indeed taken indoors with a complete random floor lamp for lighting.

I took the pictures with my iPhone as I was too lazy to fire up the Fujifilm camera with its excellent fujinon macro lens. I need to get my shit together...

We are working a bit backwards here, but I also started to think if I had seen some prototype track that matched my tests.

Here are some shots I took at Jädraås in Sweden a couple of years back:






Not entirely without likeness to the old track test, I dare say.

I learned some important things when I was publishing. First is that many people in the hobby industry are mainly hobbyists; they lack the personality to run a business. In other words they are good and creative people but doomed to fail. Second is that most influential hobby companies, usually the biggest, are just plain stupid. Kalmbach, for example, did more to harm the hobby after about 1985 than any business I can think of.

The heart of our hobby is creativity, not accumulation of ready to run models. And, despite what nearly everyone may think, it's not primarily about "operating" trains. It's about building models.

Unless people take the trouble to learn about whatever you want to build and to put something of yourself into its creation, they will lose interest and wander off to some other shallow pursuit.

Too many today want entertainment rather than a creative challenge. Kim's analysis is correct and, in another couple of decades, the model train hobby is likely to shrink to the size of today's model ship hobby. Worse, the entire hobby of building models of any kind probably will be only a fraction of the size model trains used to be.

How disturbing.

Russ

I agree,  old and slow but on we go.

Your drawing board and drafting machine are truly exceptional.  And I am equally impressed with the clarity and detail of the mechanical drawing print on the table. I have a road map I have scaled down and want to hang on an interior wall of the gas station but, when I print it on my printer (an Epson ET 3700) clarity is significantly lost. It is difficult to see a definitive road let alone any labeling. 

Quote from: Hydrostat on May 09, 2025, 05:22:54 AMI once had an Epson Stylus CX5400, which printed with resolutions up to 5760 x 1440dpi (x-y axis). Unfortunately there's been a hard decline in consumer printers, which mostly stop at 600 dpi now. Even professional digital printing machines don't have higher resolutions than 1.200 dpi anymore. I was really lucky to find a printing plant in my hometown that is able to print at that rate.

An interesting read.  I was somewhere the other day where the reduction in the urge/need to print things was discussed. Doubtless that impacts the commercial offerings.

You did prompt me to check out what's available and I see Epson still offer 5760 x 1440 machines. Not too expensive, but if you are only printing a few decals then possibly unjustified. It may be possible to find somebody local who has one.

I've had good decals made from my artwork by Bill at https://www.pdc.ca/rr/custom_decals/. I believe these are printed at 1200dpi on a CMYK+W laser. The resolution may be insufficient for you, but for most modelling uses they provide a fast and quality service tailored to modellers.

Hauk,

did you take the pictures inside or outside with natural light? To me it seems like the light might adulterate the colors. And the color impression might benefit from a slightly bigger camera dictance. My first impression indeed was that the sleepers in the first picture seem too monochrome brown, but I do emphatically second what Barney said about the box car red debate, too. Maybe a second wash with a whitish or blackish tone just to darken or lighten the fibre's gaps a bit?

Cheers,
Volker, his majesty of creosote drenched grooved rail sleepers