Pulp Market Share, 1918.

[ratmmjess]

Comments

RAILROAD (title varies)

[magscanner]

It was a pulp in format until August 1954, when it changed to the US version of quarto (i.e. about 8 1/4 by 10 3/4). See http://www.magazineart.org/main.php/v/pulpspecialized/railroad/ for a good run of the second pulp incarnation, and two issues of the first. They ran fiction as late as the 1970's.

It staggered on under the same editor for decades, but was sold to the publishers of RAILFAN in, I think, the mid 1980's. RAILFAN AND RAILROAD kept the old volume numbering.

RAILROAD AND CURRENT MECHANICS -- What kind of demographic was that version aimed at?

edited

[richardthinks]

So yesterday I stupidly went off musing about pulps without having read this here post - I was thinking about solo heroes and airman pulps, and whether, had the format and flight not coincided we'd've got a big continuation of the submarine dime novel into sf (which we kinda do anyway with Trek) - and it never even occurred to me that there was a whole lost genre of railway-based sf, waiting to be Borgesed into existence. Now I've thought of it, I bet there's a raft of "railway to the stars" stories (either up beanstalks or using magnetic accelerators), but I wonder - what were the dominant themes of Railroad Man's Magazine? Was it, like Thomas the Tank Engine, about supporting vital infrastructure, helping the post/doctor/vet/carnival dragon to get through, avoiding "confusion and delay"? And could that be parleyed into Infratructure And Responsible Routinization To The Stars? I'd love to know.

Re: edited

[ratmmjess]

Railroad Man's Magazine might be thought of as a generalist pulp which had a railway leitmotif in every story. You had science fiction railway stories, action/adventure, romance, sports, detective--just about everything you could think of. There wasn't really a dominant theme in the magazine.