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In Poland, railroad magazine keeps steady circulation, adds fans
The Vindicator ( Youngstown)
Photo
From left, Rich Melvin, publisher, Ed Boyle, ad sales and marketing director and Jim Barrett, vice president and assistant editor, are three of the seven staffers who compile O Gauge Rail-Roading, a seven-time-a-year, 100-page magazine dedicated to electric trains that’s based in Poland.
By Karl Henkel
POLAND
Ed Boyle’s slightly worn, dark black Ives No. 1117 locomotive isn’t the typical electric train.
He bought the train, with the iron engine and tin tender, about a decade ago at a garage sale in Pennsylvania.
After many rounds of negotiations, he got it from the seller for $100.
One hundred dollars for a small train?
Considering the age — Boyle estimates it’s about 100 years old — it was a bargain from his perspective.
Even better: The locomotive, which even dates Boyle’s employer, Poland-based O Gauge Rail-Roading Magazine, by more than half a century, still runs.
It’s not new, but the 3-to-4-pound train keeps chugging along, much like OGR, which dates back to 1969 and is still successful, thanks to a wide range of train brainpower and some recent technological investments.
The staff of just seven, tucked away in a 5,000-square-foot, three-story office building on Sheridan Road just off U.S. Route 224, continues to remain innovative while producing its seven-times-a-year, 100-page magazine dedicated to all things train. It covers history, collectibles and the electrical aspect of a time-tested hobby that is far from dead.
“The demographics for this hobby the last 80 or 100 years have always been [age] 40 through 60,” said Jim Barrett, vice president and assistant editor. “Now it’s finally shifting down to young people, 21 through 35.”
The reason, Barrett says, is that locomotives today have the bells, whistles — and more.
“Thirty or 40 years ago, you had a locomotive and it was a thrill if you could blow the whistle or ring the bell,” he said. “Now these locomotives have the whistle and the bell ... with maybe 200 to 300 other things.”
Rich Melvin, publisher and a lifelong Struthers resident who moved OGR to Poland from Nazareth, Pa., in 2002, said the more complex locomotives are something not offered by today’s mainstream technology.
“This hobby appeals to those who want to do more than just sit and move their thumbs to play a video game,” he said. “There’s a large segment of the population that is growing increasingly dissatisfied with just doing this [moving their thumbs]. That’s mind-numbing, this is mind-stimulating.”
Train collecting now has a pseudo-video-game feel — Boyle showed off remote controls that resemble cable-television remotes that can do a wide variety of tricks like couple and uncouple trains and can be programmed to run planned routes — all while allowing enthusiasts to continue to collect.
“The manufacturers have often tried to bring what’s thought of as an old man’s hobby into the genre of new people via the use of digital remote controls,” Melvin said. “The hobby does have that appeal for people who want to do something with their hands to create something.”
The proof of the success is in the numbers. In an era where magazine circulation has dropped and advertising revenues have plummeted, OGR has managed to come out relatively unscathed.
“We haven’t been hit as hard as a lot of other companies and a lot of other industries,” said Melvin, who also acquired Ameri-Towne, building kits produced at Boardman Molded Products Inc. that can be incorporated with train sets from some of the most popular brands such as Lionel and MTH Electric Trains.
He said advertising has fallen about 15 percent to 20 percent because of the recession, but expects it to pick back up as the magazine enters its busy holiday season.
Circulation has remained steady at about 32,000 worldwide. That’s right, worldwide.
OGR has subscribers in Canada, Australia, England, Finland, Germany, New Zealand and Switzerland, just to name a few.
Print circulation remains constant, but OGR is actually building its readership by connecting the tradition of trains with the advancement of the Internet. Melvin recently recorded a six-minute video preview — using new high-definition equipment — for the August/September issue and estimated the magazine gained about 100 new subscribers.
“It had to be the video because we didn’t change anything else,” said Melvin.
Well, there’s one other thing. OGR also has a lively forum section on its website, www.ogaugerr.com, which gets more than 6 million page views each month.
Barrett said the hobby’s upswing in connectivity — customers have gone from strictly collecting trains to interacting with them — has kept customers interested in the magazine.
“When people tighten up, they’ll spend less money on consumer goods,” he said. “They might spend less on the hobby, they might spend less on the trains, but they will keep the magazine because that’s what keeps them in touch with the hobby.
“The last thing they’ll do will be to pull back from the magazine.”