@Ron045 posted:..................................For instance, their publication mainly focuses on pre and post war toys and is still printed on newspaper print. That leaves the rest of us in the hobby uninterested and out in the cold. I am saddened to say my publication hits the recycle bin within 30 minutes of its arrival. For about half the price, we can receive OGR on high gloss on varying topics from the last 100 years of model trains.
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I'm curious the math you are doing there. Are you comparing the price of a year's membership in TCA to the price of a one year subscription to OGR?
Apples and Oranges, if that's it. Unless you can tell me where to go visit the OGR Model & Toy Train Museum !
(or many other TCA things that are supported by general membership dollars, but that is admittedly the biggest one). The paper Headquarters News is not meant to be like an OGR magazine. The TCA Quarterly (while still obviously not as big as an issue of OGR) is the publication with a little more "in depth" articles (I will admit many are of topics on older items).
The Headquarters News serves it's purpose. And it generally has many listings for modern trains as well, it doesn't end at 1969. Obviously the numbers of ads are going down as more people use the electronic format, but the listings are still there.
Not that I was opposed to eliminating the 2 signature rule, but by doing so, it seems (based on some comments in this thread) like it might have hurt people keeping membership up continuously. With the ability to drop and rejoin at will, it seems at least some people are looking at it as "I'll join if I want to go to the next York and then let it lapse until the next time I want to go to York". I don't think a lot of people were dropping in/out like that in the signature days. At some point there may be no more TCA to join or York to go to if the majority of folks start operating like that.
-Dave
