'TRAIN COLLECTOR'
The Journal of the TCS

1st Edition ......December 2006

While carrying forward some of the features of TCS News, the first issue of  TRAIN COLLECTOR is effectively a new magazine and the most advanced in technical development to come from a train collecting society in Britain. Being produced on one of the latest digital printing machines, it has been possible to include a feature that would not have been possible by previous methods, within the budget available..... but we are not giving away the secret! You will have to see for yourself!

The magazine caters for a wide range of model railway and toy train collecting interests. Subjects include: Hornby Dublo, Betal, Anbrico, GEM, Issmayer, Bassett-Lowke, Exley, Peco, Lone Star, Weimar etc. A relatively new feature will be articles for collectors of currently produced models which are clearly aimed at the collectors' market.

TRAIN COLLECTOR also looks at past events and events to come. It journeys onto the Internet to see what is going on there and visits the auction rooms to keep you in touch with interesting items sold and with dates of future sales.

To find out more, join the TCS and get yourself a copy. Work is already underway on the second issue which will have more mouth-watering subjects.

Editor, Pat Hammond

From the December 2006 issue of the Train Collectors Society magazine there will be a new Editor, Pat Hammond, and it will be renamed the 'Train Collector'

New Tracks

 When I was asked if I would be prepared to replace Jeff in the editorial chair, it was with the message that increasing further the membership of the Train Collectors Society should be at the forefront of any changes I made. It was largely this challenge which appealed to me and was partly the reason I accepted the invitation.

I have set myself the challenge to repeat Jeff s feat and treble the membership again. As I see it there needs to be two considerations. The first is to continue to provide the present membership with what interests them and the second is to widen the base of the magazine to include material that appeals to collectors who feel left out at present. We are, after all, a society that caters for any make, any gauge and any age. Out of respect to the single brand societies, in the past there has not been much published in TCS News about Bassett-Lowke, Hornby 0 gauge, Hornby Dublo, Lima, Trix Twin or Wrenn and yet these makes are within our remit. They will be included in future. That does not mean that we wish to compete for membership with any other society but we should be promoting the idea of dual membership. Indeed, I hope that we will continue to take the opportunity to promote them and their activities. I also feel that, with certain exceptions, we have not had much coverage of modern collectables. There are many who now collect current releases of wagons by Dapol, Bachmann and Hornby. In giving up the Rovex Column, it is my intention to use the space to run a special feature for 'modern' collectors, for whom the Train Collectors Society currently offers very little. All of this will need space and this can be achieved, within the current budget, by redesigning the internal layout of the magazine. To help with this I am involving my old friend Ray Springall who has worked wonders in space saving techniques with Ramsay's Catalogue. Production of the magazine will, therefore, be moving to Scarborough.  With the new edition of Ramsay's Catalogue coming out this autumn, the opportunity has been taken to give our magazine a major plug. At present only 1 in 10 purchasers of the book are members the Train Collectors Society and this seems a great opportunity to change that.  Finally, the magazine is to have a new look and a new name. From December it will the Train Collector and its front cover will take on more the look of magazine seen on the shelves at any branch of W H Smith.

Your Part

It goes without saying that I need you to continue to send in articles, news and photographs. The trend will be towards shorter articles but more of them. Ones of 500,1000, or 1500 words in length will be fine - the more factual and educational the better. Even a single paragraph about something of interest will be welcome. Remember, it does not have to be long! Also, wherever possible, please send me your articles in digital form and in Word. This saves horrendous amount of time being spent on retyping them - and I don't have much time! With photographs, we obviously want reasonable quality - so, ask yourself if you would like to see pictures of that quality in a magazine. With digital cameras now widely used, good quality should be quite easy to achieve. I can lighten it if it's dark, straighten it if it's crooked, I can even remove unwanted background, but I can do nothing with it if it's not sharply in focus. Text without pictures can be visually a little boring. If you cannot supply pictures I may be able to supply them from my picture library. I also want to develop a closer link with both the society's website, which is managed by our brilliant webmaster Dave McCarthy, and with our chat group which is a first class source of material from some very knowledgeable people. Mike Ennis from time to time sends me interesting stories from the auctions and I hope to be including these along with other news from the auction houses.