Wow! Dreams can come true! Received a courtesy copy of the November/December issue of N Scale magazine. It contains my article "Smoke Along the River - 50 Years Later" which highlights my now defunct old model railroad layout, the Schuylkill Division of the Pennsylvania RR.
Years ago I had submitted a contest article to Model Railroader which was quickly returned without comment. Last year, I was trying to get hold of an old issue of N Scale magazine and while communicating with the editor, Pamela Clapp, I asked if they would be interested in an article on my old railroad. She looked at the photos I had on the "My Railroad Dream World" site (http://myrrlayout.com/R/Aspfiles/DetailPage.asp?Xfer_Code=20001280&Scale=N). When she indicated that she would be interested I began writing the article.
To get published I think the main ingredient is a good photographer. My photos with an 8 Megapixel Canon camera were just OK. My daughter, who is a professional photographer, had taken pictures of the layout but her specialty was people, kids in particular. Her shots did not have the depth of field and lighting necessary for model work. Fortunately I had a friend at work, Bob Manning, who was also a published photographer. After a little coaxing (actually a lot of coaxing) he agreed to help out. Practically every picture used in the article was from his work.
As you can tell from my blog. I tend to be wordy and include excess parenthetical expressions, so I kept trimming the word excesses until I was comfortable enough to submit it.
Working with Pam was a pleasure. She is an expert at declining your suggestions without making you feel like you have been told "No". The magazine ends its articles with a silhouette of a caboose. Since this was a Pennsylvania RR article, I asked for a silhouette of an N5c cabin car. They just ignored that suggestion! :-)
What I learned is that if you want a certain photo design layout, you had better make that clear up front. To me the most glaring mistake is that the pictures did not capture the theme of the article. What I would have done is take the top picture on page 28 and spread it across 2 pages with an inset of the November 1958 picture of Carl Apple's Norfolk & Ohio "Smoke Along the River" centerfold. After all, that was the theme of the article. I brought this up when I received a mock-up of my article, along with a request for captions. When I asked for that, I was told it was too late in the process. So make clear your requests/suggestions up front. I thought I had done that when I submitted the initial article highlighting those 2 pictures but I think that concept got lost when the graphic artist began his work. (And I still haven't figured out why the track plan river was converted from blue/black to purple. Also my 4' and 2' aisles became 4" and 2" (kind of skinny :-) respectively).
My only other objection was the lack of overall pictures. My personal preferences is to see an overall layout shot or two so that you can visualize where the close-up shots fit into the big picture. Again I was told my suggestion was too late in the process (and the magazine also has capacity issues).
So if you want to write an article, DO IT! All they can do is say no (and Pam can do that so politely you won't even realize it). But first, get a good photographer (I'll send you Bob Manning's number :-)).
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