I run hot and cold with all of them. I have consistently liked Rail Express (good balance between now, past and modelling) and I currently subscribe to RM, Railways Illustrated and Traction.
In the case of Traction, I miss David Brown being the editor. It has not been the same since he left and I find it becoming more niche and more boring as the pool of contributors is narrow and repetitive. There is quite a bit overlap with their modelling magazine BRM which seems to be in better health.
Railways Ilustrated had morphed into a hybrid of RM and RE especially with modelling in the case of the latter. There are some good articles but I wish they'd drop the massively long pseudo articles written by Pip Dun principally that goes something like "in 1973 class 47/4 no. 47456 went to Dundee on a train. Followed by another loco on a train". Tedious.
I like RM for the longer articles but stopped subscribing for a time when Mortons bought RE, the content overlapped a lot, no real surprise.
That said there is only so much news and nostalgia around so repetition is somewhat inevitable.
In the case of Traction, I miss David Brown being the editor. It has not been the same since he left and I find it becoming more niche and more boring as the pool of contributors is narrow and repetitive. There is quite a bit overlap with their modelling magazine BRM which seems to be in better health.
Railways Ilustrated had morphed into a hybrid of RM and RE especially with modelling in the case of the latter. There are some good articles but I wish they'd drop the massively long pseudo articles written by Pip Dun principally that goes something like "in 1973 class 47/4 no. 47456 went to Dundee on a train. Followed by another loco on a train". Tedious.
I like RM for the longer articles but stopped subscribing for a time when Mortons bought RE, the content overlapped a lot, no real surprise.
That said there is only so much news and nostalgia around so repetition is somewhat inevitable.
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