Al Kalmbach started Trains Magazine in 1940 as a noticeably more professional competitor to Railroad Magazine. While Railroad Magazine had changed its name from Railroad Stories in 1937, it still ran numbers of fiction articles and poetry. Trains Magazine used higher-quality slick, coated paper that gave it the ability to print better photographs and appeal to a different audience.
The difference in audience was most evident in its advertising. Trains Magazine avoided the typical consumer ads of shoes, books and fishing reels in favor of large numbers of railroad company travel promotions and image ads. The appeal to professional railroad workers was evident in the numbers of ads it ran for heavy duty bearings and freight shipping.
The magazine has stayed with Kalmbach Publishing Co since its founding. For a brief 2-year period (Dec, 1951 to Feb, 1954), it expanded its name to Trains and Travel Magazine, but soon switched back. The magazine also tried several tag lines including:
Most magazines decrease both their overall cut sizes and their content pages over time. Trains Magazine is an exception. It began as a thin booklet, 6.9" x 10.3", very similar in size to Railroad Magazine. Like Railroad Magazine, Trains started out with full-color covers. By 1948, Trains enlarged its size by almost a third to 8.3" x 11.3" and switched to higher-quality black and white imagery. It has maintained that size ever since.
Trains was an expensive magazine when it started. Trains cost 25¢ per month for about 70 pages while Railroad Magazine cost only 15¢ for 144 pages. By comparison, the high-quality, large format Life Magazine cost only 10¢.
Once the magazine shifted to it larger, slick paper format, Trains filled a niche for the railroad industry that Life Magazine filled for the consumer market. Black and white photos were its forté, with many of its cover photos verging on artsy. This practice also separated the magazine from Railroad Magazine that generally used more expensive colorful custom paintings for its covers and rather grainy images inside.
With its heavy use of real photos, Trains Magazine makes for an intriguing and historic collectible. Unfortunately, the low quality of its surviving issues is a major drawback for collectors expecting only the best. Even issues from as late as the 1970s are often found in very poor and distressed conditions. Having handled thousands upon thousands of magazines, I suggest that the average conditions of Trains Magazines are among the poorest I've encountered. Only original pulp magainzes from the 1890s are worse. Collectors may only want to pay $5 or less for single issues, but I warn them, they will get what they pay for.
Finding Trains Magazines is easy. Finding them in very good condition is challenging. I think that many of the typical condition problems can be explained by the use of overly thin paper for the covers. The paper was flimsy and was always stressed when folded for the covers. It is a rare issue that does not show separation of the covers along the spine. In fact, covers are separated or missing entirely from an overly high percentage of issues. I also suspect some of the condition problems can be explained by its target market. Women's magazines have always survived better than men's magazines.
In terms of condition, it is very common to find Trains Magazines with rips, tears, and coffee stains and writing on the covers. Curiously, the inside pages are usually in good condition. Most issues reek of cigar and cigarette smoke. Rusty staples are extremely common along with expected smells from long-term storage.
Because the covers were so flimsy, it is not uncommon to see covers re-attached or reinforced with 3M brand book tape. That sort of restoration does NOT make issues more collectible; it certainly does NOT add to value. However, it does allow collectors to add to their collections until they can be replaced by issues in better conditions.