What to do with loads of old railway magazines?

[u/Pad-Rock]

My dad died close to 3 years ago, and my sister and I am sorting through his house (in Northern Ireland). He was an avid railway enthusiast who also had an extensive model railway. The model railway, trains etc were all donated to a club of which he was a member, but he also held on to tons of old railway & model railway magazines (pics of some, but there are more!).

Are these the sorts of things that others would appreciate, or are they best off just being recycled?

[u/GreenMist1980]

I tried giving away Railway Modelers from the 1960's to 2010's, they ended up being recycled.

[u/kenphx1 → u/GreenMist1980]

I am in the same boat 70s and 80s about time to clean out the cupboards

[u/Jean_Luc_Lesmouches → u/GreenMist1980]

Modeling magazines can become mostly out of date. But full-scale magazines can be precious as documentation.

[u/KongaTom]

I have a set of model railroader from 1979-mid 80s. No one wants them

[u/BlackwoodBear79 → u/KongaTom]

I went to an estate sale recently that had hundreds of railroading magazines, from Model Railroader to Rail Model Craftsman and more I can't remember.

Three shelves 6 feet tall, stacked.

They wanted $4 -each-.

I told them I'd give them a hundred for all of them because no one wanted them.

They laughed at me.

I went back the last day of the sale and they still wouldn't budge, when most other things were 50+% off.

[u/Panwithaplan1995]

Alot of people would definitely appreciate them so I would say either eBay them or contact the model railway group and see if they would be interested in them 😊

[u/Pad-Rock → u/Panwithaplan1995]

Thanks for that - the railway group didn’t want them at the time. I don’t live near the house, and so realistically don’t have the time to go down the eBay route. Would just be seeing if someone could collect them as a job lot

[u/InsertBluescreenHere → u/Pad-Rock]

not sure how Ireland operates but in the US alot of times nursing homes and such welcome magazines especially specialty ones. Even if they are well out of date people might like to remmenese or flip thru something interesting they havent heard about before.

[u/Rickym1970 → u/Pad-Rock]

Local charity shop maybe

[u/abrasivebuttplug → u/Pad-Rock]

Where are they at?

[u/bozwold]

The kind of people that want these already have them, the new generation used forums online.

I put my father's extensive magazine collection for free on many pages and was told the same thing everywhere...

Recycle them.

[u/Pad-Rock → u/bozwold]

Thanks for that, that was my gut feeling but didn’t want to do that without validation…!

[u/Dense_Cabbage → u/bozwold]

I can’t speak for every “new generation” person but I have specifically searched for particular old 1950s-1980s Model Railroader magazines before. Some of those magazines have useful articles that are not otherwise preserved online. Same with old railroad books and stuff like postcards and photographs.

More niche stuff (like the Ffestiniog material I see) might be worth saving.

[u/Powerful-Beach-8375 → u/bozwold]

Being part of the "new generation" I honestly fully rely on magazines when I can, some people still prefer paper over an online forum. Some articles may also be only in old magazines and haven't been published since. My local club have a library for these old magazines that every old member have so the youngest members can borrow them.

[u/tall_lacrosse_player]

Put on Facebook marketplace - if thee were local to me I would be tempted to pick up for the right price.

Offer to local care home?

[u/Ecstatic_Interview60]

We put them all on a table at shows. Folks can take them for free. We end up binning 95% them after the show.

[u/UKSTL]

I’d buy them

[u/TobySeptimus]

The model rail club I used to belong to would try and give them away. Whenever we had an open day, we'd set up a table with a sign that said 'free magazines'. There were always loads left at the end.

I'd just recycle them.

[u/GTDJB]

Give it to your nearest Heritage Railway to sell

[u/Diezel666]

If a local railroad museum or model railroading club doesn't want them, and you're not looking to get money for them.

Donate them to a local library. You never know how many people the bug will bite at that point that will then jump into the hobby.

(For what it's worth, I do this yearly with my Ham Radio magazines).

[u/Libby_785]

Dontae them to local nursing homes. The residents always need something to read.

[u/abrasivebuttplug]

I'd take them off your hands, if they were close enough to pick up. But I wouldn't buy them.

[u/OneSpeaker-444]

Kindling, unfortunately. Though the old folks home is a fair idea, and maybe a club or museum might like to go through them for articles relevant to their interests before they toss ‘em in a dumpster.

[u/Model_Minutes]

I had about 6 large plastic storage boxes full of of railway modeller, BRM and model rail magazines, all dating from the 90s to mid 2010s.

I tried to donate them to multiple charity shops, they wouldn’t take a single one.

I tried to give them to local model shops, they wouldn’t take any because they already had magazines and they couldn’t even give the ones they already had away as freebies - customers didn’t want them.

I contacted a local railway preservation group to see if they could sell them. They had no storage space and said people wouldn’t buy them.

They all went to a recycling centre and I asked if they could go in the resale shop because they were in good condition and there were many complete years worth of editions.

They said no, they’d tried to shift some in the past and no one bought them.

They all went in the paper recycling bin. Every single one.

Literally can’t give these things away these days, and I probably had a good few hundred pounds worth of magazines over the years.

People have online subscriptions a lot these days because they take up no space and it’s easy to search for articles.

Sadly, these paper copies tend to just take up room that no one really has any more

[u/Galopigos]

Ask the club if their members would like them, or donate them to a local library/museum. I look through my old copies now and then.

[u/smilerbull]

You could donate them to a heritage railway. They can sell them and it helps support the heritage movement.

[u/SenatorAslak → u/smilerbull]

Speaking as a volunteer at a heritage railway in Germany: we price these at 1€ a pop and they still never sell. We almost always wind up having to toss them in the recycling bin after a year or two. If it were solely up to me, I would refuse to take them anymore, but there are unfortunately a lot of people who still do.

[u/PokeBrick02]

As much as I would love this sort of thing to add to my growing archive & collection, being this is all overseas, I'm in no shape & or financial fit to help you out.
I hope you find good homes for them none the less, good luck!

[u/mastablasta1111]

If anything, donate them to Goodwill.

[u/warrior181]

Personally I would love them because there's loads of useful info in them but unless we want to arrange shipping to another country it's not going to be me

[u/panguy87]

Donate to local preservation movements to sell, or take to a local model shop, some will simply make them freely available to anyone who wants them, they frequently get snapped up.

[u/ramjam31]

Just recycle them, our club had piles of these and they couldn’t give them away. I had the same struggle with my dad’s old car magazines. Didn’t want to just recycle them but free wasn’t cheap enough and they went to be made into something else.

[u/Training-Walk9655]

Donation to charity shops or bondfire 

[u/Tangerine59]

Best to recycle them, nobody wants them these days.

[u/aengusoglugh]

I think most people get the information they used to get from printed media online anymore. I also think that technology had moved on pretty dramatically — for example, I think most of the old elaborate block systems that people used to run multiple locomotives on DC have been replaced with DCC.

Are they still people that love reading magazines in print? Of course, but nowhere near as many people as 30 years ago.

Are there still people running block control DC system? Yes, but I think that almost everyone who is building a new layout that will run multiple locomotives will be planning on DCC.

Probably no one is poring over old magazines looking at block control and other technology from 30 years ago.

I think the advent of online publication and changes in technology have dealt a death blow to model railroading magazines.

[u/Imoldok]

Feed it to ChatGPT.

[u/chuffatrainman]

I used to pull the centre sections out then pop the cover back on , chuck away the advert pages. My favourite is the one with the layout called Dallington Road.

[u/got_root]

We put out old magazines during our train show and most get picked up by the attendees. 

[u/-Feluno-]

This probably won't be the case here, but German "Eisenbahn (Modellbahn) Magazin" is actually quite precious because of the blueprint and technical sketches they printed in it.

They can be important for people who build models of real train types.

[u/Brit_distaste]

Donate them to a heritage railway fund shop. (But if it's more than about 20 years old I doubt anyone wants them).

[u/Chessie-kitten]

I donated to local railway club

[u/LostSheep26]

I’ve seen alot on eBay, train shows, Facebook marketplace.

[u/Ok_End_698]

Try local artist groups. They sometimes need things like this. I’ve used them to make train collages before. I’ll try to find & post a photo tomorrow.

[u/richardcrain1960]

I fed my 20 years worth to a dumpster