Younger members

Wed Jun 6 11:09:50 EDT 2018

Mike: People without first hand knowledge can do research. We have many members who never knew the old N&W. One of them builds great models. He gets his information from research. BTW: I do research myself, and I am almost 84 years old. I didn't see (or remember) everything from my youth, so I can go online to the archives to learn more. No reason I couldn't submit an article about what I learn.
Jim Nichols 

    On Wednesday, June 6, 2018 7:44 AM, NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:

 Mike
Many thanks for the kind words, I hope everyone will find the new Arrow entertaining and interesting.
However, I will take exception to you comments on writing for the Arrow. While I understand your comments, I beg to differ.
I did not work for the N&W, nor am I old enough (at times I feel like it though!) to truly remember much of the steam era, my exposure to the N&W was only via my father, a Radford Division conductor hired in 1947. As you will see in a future Arrow article or column, my background and exposure was far less than most folks. Yet, even though I was not born until after diesels had begun to arrive, anyone can still write on events from years before their time, it happens all the time. It takes some effort, research, study, reading and finally writing a story. Books are published constantly on history that folks the writers could not possibly have participated in. Civil War, early Presidential history, etc. etc. These folks get interested in a subject, research it and study it and share it with others. There will be an article in the near future of how the Archives can help you. This resulted in some small scrap of a note I read, probably for the 10th time, that suddenly registered in my mind that this was something I did not know, so I quickly researched it in our Archives on line, and found an answer on a 126 year old subject!
Please don’t think there is nothing new, remember, folks who may be readers might not know about history, or even today. You will see in my editor’s column in the issue that is in the mail right now, a request for folks to consider a photographic article on a then and now image, what was once there in a vintage image, and revisit (without trespassing, of course) a location and record the scene today. This is something any of our photographers can do.
BestKen Miller

On Jun 6, 2018, at 6:30 AM, NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:
Ken,
I have only words of appreciation for the Arrow and the insights of the N&W era that each issue contains. But, as a writer who has had numerous articles published in the Bristol Herald Courier including several railroad related pieces, I am at a loss to offer any positive response to your plea for more material for the magazine. I did not have any involvement with or was I employed by the N&W so cannot come forward with any articles. Unfortunately that is also the case for many current members and will be even more evident with any younger members enlisted. Sadly, it has to be acknowledged that the sources for N&W material are all in the senior citizen —- really senior, such as myself —- group. Sorry for the gloom and doom but that is the reality of the situation.
Respectfully,
Mike Pierry, Jr.
On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 8:53 PM NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:

Jeff

Let me address several factors here, as the new editor of the Arrow. By the way, due to the change over with the magazine, the April-May-June issue was delayed, but should be in the mail. Those of you who were at Spencer saw the proof of the new format. The next issue is being assembled as we speak, and is hoped to go to the printer by the first of July, and the plan is to be back on schedule before the end of the year. There was almost no ready to go material available when I took over the magazine. You will be able to read more when they arrive.

To address your comments, the Arrow actually began as a bi-monthly magazine. In those early days, that first issue was 10 pages, the second was 14 and the third was 12. Five years later, the first issue of 1990 was 16 pages. In 1996, the first issue was 24 pages. By 2007, the magazine had gone quarterly, and normally was a 32 page issue. 

The magazine has changed for a wide variety of reasons, but unfortunately, the two main reasons are simple, cost of printing and mailing, and a lack of contributions from members. A look back at those early issues finds many of the same names involved as we see today, but some others have passed away. Not many new names have appeared over time. Unfortunately, one story that I have heard over time is “I submitted an article for the Arrow and never heard anything” yet, we find no evidence of such articles. So, please, if you submitted an article in the past and never saw it, never heard from it, please send it on again. Mail it to the Society’s P.O. Box in Roanoke, or email me at:
thearrow at nwhs.org. 

That being said, we do have a great photo essay of Clare Yard in the winter, which is being saved for a winter issue obviously. We have several lengthy pieces on the Virginian, an outstanding history piece from Tom Salmon on the early beginnings of the VGN, and a piece on the author’s 1978 strike experience, which is coming soon.

I’m not trying to make excuses on this, but if we do not have material, we cannot produce magazines, what I’d love to see is that we have enough new material to print six issues a year. Most of the material in the March-April-May issue are things that will work and trying to get a broader scope of coverage. Over the past number of years, Kevin EuDaly had created the Arrow with basically nothing in hand, using reprints of technical articles on electrification. Some folks did not like it, but those same folks did not provide us with other material. If he had not produced the magazine in this way, there would have not been a magazine.

It is a Catch-22, we need more material to print more magazines, but we cannot print more magazines to encourage more folks to contribute. 

Now, on that aspect. Folks have grown quite used to the Arrow being all color and a really slick magazine. Our single biggest expense as an organization is the mailing and printing of the Arrow each year. To print a magazine of the quality and style you see requires us to use large 4 color presses at a printer established to do such work. For those of you who are not used to the print world, magazines like ours are printed on large sheets of paper, with 8 pages on each side of the sheet, creating a 16 page “signature”, magazine size is dictated by those 16 page signatures, so you have either a 16 page magazine, a 32 page, 48 page or 64 page magazine. You cannot easily do a 24 page magazine, it is not how the printers are readily set up.

If we drop back and do a 16 page magazine every two months, it becomes the same thing as a 32 page magazine every four months, but now we have increased our mailing costs not quite by double, but close. Printing costs mainly come in the set up for print. So, while we do not actually double the printing costs, it will definitely increase the costs there as well. Can we save money by going to a black and white magazine? Yes, a bit, but the committee the board appointed to study this came up with a lengthy report with alternative pricing and ways of doing the magazine. Ultimately, we managed to still reduce the costs and retain a color magazine at only a slightly higher cost than a black and white version.

Some folks have asked “can’t you do a print on demand?” Generally speaking, our magazine is a heavily photographic magazine. Photographs, particularly color, do not do nearly as well in the print on demand mode, at least at a reasonable cost. Print on demand is usually for copies that are not aimed for quantities over 100 or 200. The price is hard to do. The converse of that is, we do not have a large enough membership to make the magazine larger and cheaper to print. This is part of the why we are pushing to increase our membership, so we can afford to do more for the members, or more value for your membership dollar. We do appreciate your membership and we can do more with more members.    

Why people do not contribute, I do not know. Perhaps they feel like they don’t know as much, perhaps they are afraid of the critics who, upon occasion, have taken an article or item to task on this or another list. Perhaps it is that they did indeed submit something, never heard back, or never saw anything in print. I’ve tried to be in touch with most of our regular contributors, but a few emails have bounced back on me, so if you have contributed but not heard from me, please contact me at the address listed above. I apologize for any miscommunication that might have occurred but we truly are interested and want materials. We are looking for a wide variety of things, not just steam. Do not get me wrong, steam is my favorite, but we do need to cover a lot of other things as well. There is a huge batch of material out there and subjects to cover. Don’t know how to do it, or have materials for illustration? Not a problem, please get in touch, we have a great archive of materials and knowledge of more out here, our Archives volunteers can be amazingly helpful.

If you are afraid of writing an article because of making mistakes, that is the least of your concern. All the material is closely reviewed by our review board and believe me, they are are not afraid to make changes! But the best thing is they are made before it goes to print. Now that being said, even the best of the committees do not know everything, but we are pretty broadly covered with knowledge, so most material will be finely checked.

To kind of sum this up, your board has studied the Magazine, quite in depth and while we want to go to more frequent publication, we need two things for that: more members and more contributors. It is that simple. 

We need contributions from everyone. Please be sure to send them to thearrow at nwhs.org, or mail your material to the P.O. Box in Roanoke, the Arrow is now done in house. Please do not assume that we have everything that was previously submitted, things get lost or misplaced.

Ken Miller

> On Jun 4, 2018, at 1:57 AM, NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:
> 
> When I first joined the society, the ARROW was a monthly magazine, that I waited in great anticipation for.
> Over the years it has been cut back to 4 times a year. 
> Although a bigger magazine, it seems like I was getting less for the cost of my membership.
> Perhaps bringing it back to 6 times a year would get more articles out from more people.
> If this is member driven, and I understand there has to be a boss in any business, then why not have more members submit articles for the ARROW.
> I did get mine submitted in the Jan-Feb- Mar issue 2017. I had written that story many years ago, and submitted it some years ago to the society, to the point I had forgotten about it. There is still so much more we can learn about the N&W and VGN.
> I just want to see the society carry on and grow. I have used all of my pixy dust many years ago, so it's going to take more than magic to keep this and other societies alive.  
> 
> Jeff Wood
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