150 years of publishing

Railway Age, Sept, 2006

What purpose does a trade publication serve? As one of Railway Age's earliest editors famously said: "It may be true that experience is the best teacher. But a man is a damned fool who cannot learn from anybody's experience but his own."

As for a trade publication serving the railway industry, another early Railway Age editor said something his successors, after 150 years in business, try their best to uphold: "If we shall succeed in producing a railway journal comprehensive without diffusiveness, practical without dryness, solid without heaviness, and of value both to those who build and operate our railroads, and those who use them, we shall feel assured of abundant success."

The magazine known today as Railway Age began life in 1856 as the Western Railroad Gazette. It became known as the Railroad Gazette in 1870, and underwent a major name change in 1908 after purchasing its chief rival, the Railway Age, which had been founded in 1876. As illustrated in our family tree (p. 92), there have been other mergers and acquisitions over the years that collectively have shaped today's magazine.

What's notable is that, in every case, the surviving name was the one that appears on the September 2006 cover.

Prior to its merger with the Gazette, the Railway Age in 1891 merged with The Northwestern Railroader, founded in 1887. The magazine was called the Railway Age & Northwestern Railroader until May 1901, when it reverted to the Railway Age. Following the Gazette/Railway Age marriage in 1908, there were two significant acquisitions. In 1927, Railway Age absorbed the Railway Review, which had been founded in 1868 as the Chicago Railway Review. In 1991, we acquired and absorbed Modern Railroads, which had been established in 1945.

Those are the major pieces of Railway Age's lineage. However, within our bloodstream flow the elements of several more publications, most of them monthly or semi-monthly companion technical publications devoted to specific industry disciplines. The oldest of these is the American Rail-Road Journal, founded in 1832 as the very first railway trade publication. It became the American Engineer & Railroad Journal in 1886, and then Railway Mechanical Engineer in 1911, when it was purchased by Simmons-Boardman Publishing Corp., our parent company. Before being folded into Railway Age in 1975, it was known as Railway Locomotives & Cars.

Railway Signal Engineer, founded in 1907, was purchased by Simmons-Boardman in 1910. It later became Railway Signaling & Communications and was last published in 1975 as Railway System Controls. (RSC returned in late 2005 as a monthly electronic publication.) The Railway Age family at one time also included Railway Purchases & Stores, last published in 1967; Railway Electrical Engineer, last published in 1942; and Railway Freight Traffic, last published in 1958. Simmons-Boardman continues to publish Railway Track & Structures, which was founded as Railway Engineering & Maintenance in 1905 and in 2005 celebrated its 100th birthday. RT&S stands on its own mostly because an industry that invests the bulk of its capital dollars in infrastructure can support a specialized publication. International Railway Journal, founded in 1960, and its spinoff, European Rail Outlook, are sister publications based in Britain.

Back to the beginning. The Western Railroad Gazette was a very different publication from its descendants. It was founded at the Chicago Tribune as a publicly circulated periodical, not a trade publication. "It wasn't much, of a paper, to put it bluntly," wrote our editors in Railway Age's 1956 centennial issue. "It was not a business paper at all, in fact. It didn't do a business paper's job. It was not addressed primarily to the men who run railroads. There was not a line in its four littered pages that would help them build or run railroads better. Its audience was the public at large--chiefly the traveling public, and probably largely commercial travelers--most of whom got the paper free. Its chief advertisers were railroad companies. Other products and services hawked in its columns included hotels, clothing, patent medicines, tobacco, jewelry, banks, business schools, and stock brokerage. The reader pages contained little of serious import to railroad men. They comprised mostly endless praises of the routes and services of the railroads that advertised, and horrendous tales of accidents, lateness, rudeness, and discomfort in the cars of their non-advertiser rivals."

That changed in 1870 when W. N. Kellogg bought the paper and renamed it the Railroad Gazette. Kellog wanted the Gazette to be "a complete repository of railroad news," including "descriptions of engineering works and improvements in machinery and rolling stock.... We shall not be satisfied unless and until the Railroad Gazette is made an effective instrument for elucidating the science and perfecting the art of transportation; not by suggestions or instructions of its conductors, so much as by the teachings and discussions by practical railroad men given in its columns."