A Family Valued...

With this issue, we celebrate our 8th year of publication. It takes a lot of people to make our magazine a success, and as editor, I’m honored to recognize all the members of our large family.

The Patriarch, of course, is Mike Lindsay, our publisher. Model Railroad News is the direct result of his vision and courage; magazine publishing is not for the fainthearted.

The entire Lindsay clan helps in various capacities. Mike’s wife, Karen, is the Operations Manager and sees to it that the money comes and goes in an orderly manner. Mike’s eldest daughter, Jennifer, is balancing her college studies in English with a role as Assistant Editor. As the editor, I’m not sure I could get along without her. There are four other, younger Lindsays and you can often find them doing varying chores from sticking on address labels to upgrading software and sweeping floors. Just having Stephanie, Matt, Phillip, and Katie around makes the magazine more fun.

Along with all the Lindsays in the Merlin, Oregon main office site (known as the “mothership”), Nancy Hutson toils away at a zillion different tasks, each a brick in her wall of accomplishments — the most visual being the design and maintenance of MRN’s web site (www.ModelRailroadNews.com). Monica Brown is an indispensable help to Karen; without her, Karen would be buried alive in paperwork.

Off-site from the mothership, we have a wonderful cast of supporting actors beginning with our Contributing Editors: First of all, there’s Michael J. Pratt. Mike has evolved into this new role after stepping down as Managing Editor, and as such, Mike remains indispensable; and then you have our St. Louis, Missouri “Mafia”, which consists of Jeff Saxton and David Otte, both are fine modelers, great researchers, and excellent writers.

We also enjoy the services of many great Contributing Writers: Stuart Thayer, William McKean II, James Powell, Dr. John Hullman, Dr. Danny Rittman, Roy Hoffman, John Lee and others.

Our Art Director and Desktop Publishing Guru, Warren Tryk, of Tumwater, Washington, deserves endless credit for making our pages bright and colorful while keeping them readable. Warren has been with MRN since Vol. 1, Issue 3. He was instrumental in converting us to a monthly and will be vital in our move to a “magazine-style” format. Somehow, Warren always gets each edition finished on time, no matter how late we turn in the copy and photos to him.

We are very fortunate to enjoy the support and encouragement of many manufacturers, so many that we cannot list them all here. The model railroad industry is not just made of companies, even though we identify products that way. It consists of thousands of real people, men and women who design and construct our favorite toys.

Model Railroad News owes its very existence to the fine folks at Valley Web Printing in Medford, Oregon. From concerned management to caring pressmen to committed mail room staff, our magazine enjoys professional handling from start to finish. We consider ourselves very fortunate to be able to live in such a beautiful, rural location here in the Rogue Valley while enjoying the capabilities of a “big city” commercial web press service.

Mike Lindsay is not the only one of us who enjoys the support of his family. My wife of 31 years, Sherry, not only supports me, but balances my tendency to turn the house into a model railroad paradise. Our children, their spouses and our grandchildren are very tolerant of “Papa’s disease.” I’ve learned a lot about model railroading from my 4-year-old granddaughter, Victoria. Seeing trains through her eyes helps me put it all into perspective.

Last, but not even close to being the least, I’d like to thank all of the readers of our magazine. Your subscriptions not only help us to pay the bills but also indicate your acceptance and support for our efforts. We appreciate this and do not take it lightly. We enjoy your letters to us, and you should know that these letters do have an affect upon us, causing us to strengthen some things and change others.

If we have the World’s Greatest Hobby, it is simply because it is filled with the World’s Greatest People!

John Sipple
Editor