I know that I am the same as many of you out there and have a large collection of modeling magazines. Just can't throw them out or give them away - too much good information that may be needed down the road. But now, I need more room that is being taken by magazines and I have a stack on my workbench that needs to go somewhere. How do you all store your magazines to make them easy to get to, in good shape, and not take up a lot of linear feet in the train room???
I use a standard 3 ring notebook binder and magazine holders from Office Max or Office Depot.The thinner mags like RMC will use a 2" binder,but MR will probly require a 2 1/2 or 3".If you have alot of magazines you will still eat up alot of space but your mags are neat, organized,and in good shape. <marquee>North American Rail Alliance</marquee>
Unfortunately I am one of the sinners whose magazines are all over the place. One solution that is affordable and readibly available is to use cereal boxes (like Cheerios) and angle one end down a bit, cut off a corner so it isn't rectangular anymore, and cover it in brown paper, like covering a book. I know a friend who does this with many years of magazines all nicely filed away, neat and tidy. Don't cha just hate guys like that....lol.
Those angled & cut-off boxes like what you're talking about are available commercially. That's how libraries store their magazines as well! Put a year's worth in each box, label it, and put it on a shelf. The end-labels of the magazines show and it works well. My parents and several friends do it with some magazines they have that they don't want to toss away. Mark
I use MR binders for MR's and ring binders with the Office Depot magazine holders for "N Scale". "Trains" I keep in a bookcase cabinet as I don't need to refer to them very often.
How about plastic bins with the lids? Their good enough for anything plus your mags won't wet or dirty if you store them in your attic.
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by UnionPacificBigBoy: How about plastic bins with the lids? Their good enough for anything plus your mags won't wet or dirty if you store them in your attic.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I was thinking about doing something like this. I have the cardboard holders now but only one shelf that is 6-7 feet long to store them on. I have about 15 of these and now have more magazines than space. I am thinking about storing my older Model Railroaders in plastic bins in a size that will store 2 years in each bin. Then I can label it with the year(s) and easily get to it later. The cardboard holders I free up will be dedicated to my N Scale mags (my scale of choice) and books since I tend to reference these more often. Incidentally, I make my own cardboard holders out of flat corrugated cardboard (you can use a big box). I took one of the commercially available ones apart and used it as a template to cut a new one (it's all one piece when disassembled). Then I just glue them back together. The cereal box idea is interesting, though I wonder if the cardboard is strong enough with a full year of magazines.
I am afraid that I am a bit of a vandal with modelling mags! They take up so much space, and items are hard to find unless you keep an index, so I get my scalpel and remove any pages that may come in handy sometime, and store them in various files. I label them "spine cars", "tank cars", etc. Very easy to find anything I need.
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Alan: I get my scalpel and remove any pages that may come in handy sometime, and store them in various files.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Yikes - Magazine collecting has become a hobby within a hobby for me. I actually agonize over trashing the lap cards - most end up in the rubbish where they belong however. Edit - I almost forgot to answer the OP - I use comercial cardboard boxes but have not gotten around to labeling them yet - they are in order however - and the shelf is full - I hope MR is thin next month.. [ 12 June 2001: Message edited by: yankinoz ]
I throw them in my floor, when I am done, I throw them on my dads bed I would recomend you all try that method, its fast and easy! Happy Railroading! Dane
Hi gang, I choose the same option as Alan. Just removed the ad pages and some editorial stuff, and my copies of MR have gone from Big boy to light USRA Mikado Then, I cut every page with a sharp blade and put them in a soft book with transparent sheets. Generally, a 70 sheets one is enough for one year of MR (of course depending of what you choose to keep) I print a summary for each book with quick details on every article (ex Layout:The plywood and Pacific in HO, era 1950). However, I keep handy copies of the current year. It takes time to play that game, but it enables to gain room and weight on storing old copies and let you find the data you need in a matter of minutes. BTW,it is a real pleasure to browse through old copies and find nice articles you forgot about my 0.02 cents, marc
The magazines I have are stored in a file cabinet that was a regular upright cabinet that has 4 decent size drawers in it and that is the neatest way and it will fit in a corner somewhere out of the way and if the corner space is a problem buy a smaller 2 drawer cabinet and use that till your space is full and buy another 2 drawer unit to do the same and it will slide right under your layout or workbench, etc... nicly and at your finger tips. This technique has worked well for me even though I have alot of magazines and alot of parts catalogs and such, the file cabinets work wonders for this and they hold just about anything I have a 4 drawer, 8 unit cabinet set that are nice to store things in the office room of my home, and I have a smaller unit of 4, 2 drawer units in my basement for this type file and books and whatnot.. Works great.... [ 13 June 2001: Message edited by: 7600EM_1 ] [ 13 June 2001: Message edited by: 7600EM_1 ]
I use the same method as BC Rail only I put them in strategic places where I might be enjoying some down time. (Next to the recliner, kitchen table, side of the toilet, etc.) I leaf through my mags so often that they start to biodegrade before they make it into any form of organized storage Happy Railroading! Russ/NYC The Hoffman Valley Railroad NARA member#28
Throw them away? how could you? . Of course I keep all mine, MRs and Trains in binders, RMCs loose and in bindres, and NG&SLG loose. They are organized on 3 different shelves however. I probably have enough mags to start a library ....Mike
I also use a form of storage similar to Alan's. Each month, when I'm done with the mag, I use a knife to slice out the articles I wish to keep. This may be one to 10-pages. I use the clear plastic sheet protectors, and have since had to expand into several 3-ring binders. I have each labeled by general catagory; Scenery-1 (trees/foliage), Scenery-2 (earth, rocks, water), Electronics, Locomotives (detailing), Rolling stock, DCC, etc.. This way I don't have to try and remember which issue (year/month) that dash-8 detailing article was in, I can find it quickly, and you don't use 1/10th the space. Why do you want to keep all the ads that make up the other 60% of the magazine? I also keep the covers of the magazines, and post them on the walls of the train room as a sort-of ever-changing wall-paper! Robert
THROW MODEL RAILROADER OUT!?! N-SCALE, RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN ALSO!?! I never throw any of them out. I must have at least 25+ years of MODEL RAILROADER in the MR binders, maybe 20 years of RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN in RMC binders also. THROW THEM OUT? Cut them to pieces? So how do you know that you don't miss something, just because something is not in N-Scale don't mean that you can't use it. I did buy some of the cardboard magazine boxes for N-SCALE magazine. I will buy binders for N-SCALE Magazine if/when they are available. I do take out the yearly index that comes out each year and put it in a binder with all the ones that go with each publication. I have an area in my train room for my magazine storage, and my Railroad book collection. I am just trying to figure how to display all the pictures and posters that I have picked up, over the years.
A little bit of advice from the post-Allison Houston area: DO NOT STORE THEM NEAR GROUND LEVEL! Dwight
My wife laid down the ultimatum. If I don't get rid of the excess soon, she will throw them all out. I have to agree with her. I have about 10 yrs of MR and Trains, plus some other mags like RMC, R&R and Railpace. In addition I have a box of old magazines that someone gave me from the 80's and late 70's. I have stored some magazines wrapped up in a garbage bag stored in a box. I used this when I was moving a couple of years ago. When I look back through some old magazines, I find that the articles sometimes refer to now "out-of-date" techniques or out of production parts. So, I am going to reduce my inventory, by keeping only the three most current years and either pitch or sell the rest. Besides, in this internet age, if you have a question, someone here will try to help and it beats going through a stack of musty magazines.
I've often wondered if it would be possible to archive back issues on CD-Rom. Of course, you need a computer to revisit the back issues, but there are some benefits. Prototype drawings should be really easy to rescale, and a collection of CDs wouldn't take up as much space. Even better, wouldn't it be nice if the publishers made digital versions of back issues available on the web that could be downloaded (for an appropriate fee) even on evening or weekends?
